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104 


Ten Years a Police Court Judge. 

ISy JUDGE WIGLITTLE. 

It can readily be imagined that a police court judge of ten years’ standing must 
have some most instructive and most amusing things to tell. His advantages for 
the study of human nature are almost unequaled. His observations on society 
should be worthy of wide reading, for its woes and wrongs are unveiled to liis 
eyes as to no other’s. He can feel its pulse day by day as even the keenest of journal- 
ists is unable to, and if, as in the case of this author, he be a man of scholarly quali- 
ties as well as practical sagacity, the book which contains the cream of his expe- 
rience, must be something well worth attention. Judge Wiglittle is a veritable 
Judge, and his book is a veritable store-house of fact and' - incident, —facts ludicrous 
and facts pathetic, facts mortifying and facts encouraging, facts of law and facts 
of morality. The book, however, is far more than a scrap-book. It abounds in 
lessons and suggestions, the out-growth, not only of close observation, but of care- 
ful reflection. The facts given in reference to intemperance are startling in the 
extreme, and, considering their source, will carry great weight. Take it all in all, 
the book is unique, interesting, and valuable, and the spontaneous humor that 
bubbles out on all appropriate occasions, renders it one of the most readable books 
of the day for all classes of readers. 


THE HOME I NT POETRY, 

Compiled by Laura C. Holloway, 
author of “Ladies of the White House,” 
“Mothers of Great Men and Women,” 
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Never before were gathered together, 
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poems that have touched the hearts and 
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of our poets, notably Mr. Longfellow, 
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Home and kindred subjects, many of 
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raconteur. Edna Doan Proctor supplies 
a charming introductory poem entitled 
“The Homeless.” The only wonder is 
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before. It is a well -classified and handy 
collection of poems which have endeared 
themselves to many thousands, and will, 
we are sure, endear themselves to many 
thousands more. 

Evening Post , Hartford, Conn.— “A 
charming bit of compilation . . . most 
excellently arranged. The deep, expan- 
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NUMBER ONE; AND HOW 
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105 


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TEN YEAES 


A POLICE COURT JUDGE 


BY 

JUDGE WIGLITTLE 

OF A COUNTRY CIRCUIT 







cv 



Vk 



&T. nm<p 

wa $h\ v r > 3 


NON OMNIS MONIAR 


FUNK & WAGNALLS 

NEW YORK 1884 LONDON 

10 and 12 Dey Street 44 Fleet Street 

All Rights Reserved 




Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, by 
PUNK & WAGNALLS, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, I). C, 


PREFACE. 


No preface to this hook would he written, hut for two 
reasons. Somewhere the author has read or heard that 
a book rarely succeeds without a preface. It seems 
necessary, therefore, to have one. This is one — that is, 
one reason. Another is that the author might do here 
what he could not well do elsewhere without disturbing 
the harmony of the work — translate for the benefit of 
the unclassic reader the line of Latin on the title-page. 
The old-time and classic translation is, “ I shall not 
wholly die or, liberally, “ I shall leave some name 
behind.” The author does not so read the Roman. 
Ilis rendering of the line is, lam not quite dead ; or, 
liberally, I still live . 


A. W. 



CONTENTS 


I. PAGE 

The Court 9 

II. 

The Circuit and Jurisdiction 15 

III. 

Wuat Made Him Judge 19 

IV. 

Weak Eyes 23 

V. 

Ups and Downs of tiie Judge’s Salary 28 

VI. 

Why did he not Resign? 34 

VII. 

Variety in Monotony. 40 

VIII. 

Anonymous Letters 45 


IX. 


The Docket of the Decade. 


52 


yj CONTENTS., 

X. TAGE 

One of the Judge’s Criminal Decisions 57 

XI. 

One of the Judge’s Civil Decisions Cl 

XII. 

A Section of the Judge’s Journal . G6 


XIII. 

Wiiat tiie Public Expects of the Judge 153 

XIV. 

What the Judge does not Expect of the Public 157 

XY. 

The Court and the Public as Friends 1G0 

XYI. 

Who Ought not to Try the Case 1G2 

XYII. 

Crimes, but not Cases * 1G5 

XYIII. 

The Occasional Case 172 

XIX. 

Acquitted Defendants 175 

XX. 


Police Officers 


170 


CONTENTS. 


vii 

XXI. 

Witnesses 185 

XXII. 

The Lawyer and the Pettifogger 192 

XXIII. 

What Caused the Crime 199 

XXIY. 

TnE Liquor Law 202 

XXV. 

Three Famous Things in Law 207 

XXVI. 

Appeals 212 

XXVII. 

The Government’s Advantages 217 

XXVIII. 

A Defect of the System 224 

XXIX. 

The Close 228 



TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


i. 

THE COURT. 

The Act creating the court whose ten years’ magis- 
tracy names this book, created as its functionaries one 
standing justice, habitually called, through the indul- 
gence of a kind public, the Judge, and two special jus- 
tices, who are accorded the great title but intermittently, 
and then not freely and as theirs of right. Upon them, 
“ the specials,” devolves the ermine only when their 
superior is sick, or seeks rest from arduous labors, or is 
disqualified for duty by personal interest. These contin- 
gencies, it may be observed, seldom happen, either be- 
cause the Judge enjoys the honor of his office so much 
that his health rarely fails him, or because his scanty 
salary scarce permits him to take a vacation, or because 
his official duties are so engrossing that he cannot 
sufficiently lay hold of any other business to spot him 
with a disqualifying interest. 

His associates in judicature, accordingly, have rather 
a poor time of it, both in the matter of honor and 
emolument. That they are dressed with brief authority 
at all is mainly due to the great consideration of the 
commonwealth for the Judge. Him the law authorizes 


10 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


for a limited number of days in the year to call on one 
or the other of his subordinates to take his place, and 
pay the substitute out of fine and fee money in his hands 
a certain per diem. This per diem is the quotient re- 
sulting from a division of the Judge’s salary by a divisor 
of three hundred and sixty-five. If the call for relief 
exceeds the number of days legally specified, varying 
from fifteen to thirty, as legislation ebbs and flows, the 
Judge (whose title in such case seems to sink into judge) 
is constrained to compensate his proxies out of his own 
pocketbook, a draft which is not unlike the pulling of 
teeth.* 

Then there appears to be another little reason why the 
specials are charily awarded the distinguished appella- 
tion. The people of the district and the country round 
about are so liberal, lavish, and as it were licentious in 
bestowing upon the chief magistrate of the court the 
honorable title, that they seem to feel it would be a 

* In the course of the ten years the court was held 123 days by one 
special justice and 63 days by the other, in the absence from the dis- 
trict of the Standing Justice ; but on no day of the 3078 court days 
was the Judge absent from his post by reason of sickness. 

The total amount paid the specials in ten years for holding court 
was $604.50, which would be an average of $30.22 per annum, or at the 
rate of nearly ten cents per day, supposing them to have done equal 
shares of the special work. If the computation be extended to the 
more vital matter of honor, it appears that the specials, assuming 
them to have shared equally and to have been, what time they 
strutted upon the stage in loco judicis plem, enjoyed each about three 
per cent of the commodity which cannot set a leg. 

If it be asked why the author uses J in his designations herein of 
his former official self, seeing that in other parts of the work he has 
implied, if not asserted, that others uniformly use j in penning the 
prefix of a police court potentate, the answer is that he involuntarily 
writes the capital out of spite. An additional reason is that he 
desires to effect a reform, and he knows no better way than to do it 
through a book that everybody will read, 


THE COURT. 


11 


greater strain than the court could bear to heap it also 
upon the minor officials. Possibly, too, they feel that 
they would thereby cheapen the prefix, and so wrong not 
only the Judge but themselves. For the people of a 
rural region, however they may sometimes berate their 
Judge and wish him hence, are always rather proud to 
have in their midst a dignitary whom they can, with the 
solemn sanctions of law, call Judge, introduce as Judge, 
interview as Judge, appeal to and appeal from as Judge, 
out of as well as in court. 

IN evertheless, a strict adherence to truth requires the 
record to be made that there ever are in communities 
some who can never quite reach the pitch of calling the 
head of their police court Judge or judge. Not, indeed, 
that they would not, for they are the most respectful of 
persons. Somehow they lack the courage. Voxfauci- 
bus hcesit. The word will not out, though they think it 
and feel it ever so loud, and content they have to be with 
saying Mister or Squire or Square, but most often Mister 
with an emphasis. ^It is quite remarkable, the difference 
between men in this regard — the glibness, familiarity, 
and handiness with which some will handle the handle, 
and the absolute incapacity of others to touch it with a 
very long pole. Even a policeman will sometimes 
mister his judge to distraction. 

Especially do the fair sex suffer much embarrassment 
in this particular. Not that the ladies are averse to 
titles. On the contrary, it is believed that they fancy, 
not to say love them. Not also but. that some ladies 
will judge you as readily as any man. We speak of the 
sex, and so speaking, it is distressful- — to the dignitary — 
to see how shy the ladies are of sounding the title even 
while with their eye they verily pronounce it. 

Singular to relate, the police court has to encounter 


12 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


more or less opposition to its honor where least it should 
expect it. ISow and then there is a lawyer who will 
never say judge , and apply the monosyllable to the Mar- 
shal of a police court. The Justice, he will say, and Mr. 
Justice, and the presiding Justice, and the magistrate, 
and Mr. Magistrate, but judge never 1 Various are the 
inquiries which philosophers have pursued to account for 
this peculiarity. It has been observed that it is not the 
largest nor the large lawyers who are thus technical. 
On the other hand, they invariably salute the genius of 
the police tribunal with the familiar title, so address him 
in epistles, so speak of him in discourse, and so lather 
him generally that but for their magnanimity suspicion 
might accuse them of a tendency to patronage. 

Then it is noteworthy that the learned writers of the 
text-books in their references to eminent jurists of the 
King’s Bench, the Queen’s Bench, and the Supreme 
Bench of the United States of America, uniformly style 
them Justice So-and-so, and Mr. Justice So-and-so, by 
which it would seem that these are titles of higher rank 
than Judge. Why, then, should there be a lawyer now 
and then who will never say judge to or of a police court 
magistrate, yet say Justice and Mr. Justice, which, ac- 
cording to the authorities, is a loftier designation ? This 
is a question that has never been satisfactorily answered. 
The nearest approach that has been made to a solution is 
that the word judge, even though it rhyme with fudge, 
has a certain loudness and roundness of sound that 
strikes the popular ear with a good deal more force of 
position, dignity, and so forth than any of its synonyms. 
Hence there is a lawyer now and then who will never 
judge a police court. 

Does the reader ask if the lawyer who thus refuses 
homage now and then practices in the court? Yes. 


THE COURT. 


13 


Why, then, should he not flatter the court, the better to 
get his case ? Here is another question to answer, and 
much has it puzzled the savans. But here also there has 
been some approach to a solution. Human minds there 
are, it is said, whose ratiocination proceeds upon the 
ground that the surest way of convincing a tribunal that 
a case is a case is to convince the tribunal that it is not 
much of a tribunal ; and whereas minds of this order 
easily assume that a police court would feel itself too 
considerably elevated and puffed up if possessed of the 
idea that it had on its bench a judge, therefore, if the 
lawyer should succeed in dispossessing the court of that 
idea, the learned counsel would the more infallibly get 
his case. The weak point of this explication is the mani- 
fest impossibility, which every lawyer of parts ought to 
understand, of persuading the ordinary police court that 
it is not run by a judge. 

The reader has noticed that the law-making powder, in 
creating the court, in which it is hoped that the reader 
is beginning to feel an interest, created no clerk. If it 
had, it is altogether probable that this book would never 
have been written. It is hardly conceivable that a judge 
who merely sits upon the bench and does the bench work 
should for that cause write a book. Small experience 
lias he by comparison with that of a judge who is both 
judge and clerk. Little comes he in contact with the 
humanity that he judges and the humanity that judges 
him, compared with the judge who, besides sitting and 
reigning on the bench, performs the infinite drudgery of 
the clerk, and thereby knows, Alpha to Omega, the 
court’s business, the court’s capacity, and the court’s 
community. 

To him, the judge who is also clerk, falls the multi- 
farious office of listening to all stories, consequential and 


14 


TE]ST YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


inconsequential, splenetic and ridiculous, before re- 
ceiving or declining complaints ; the drafting of all com- 
plaints, and issuing of all warrants and other precepts ; 
the preparing and causing to be printed all blanks, num- 
bering several hundreds in variety ; the signing and 
entering of all writs ; the filing and arranging for con- 
venient reference all papers ; the keeping of all records ; 
the custody of all papers and records ; . the making of all 
necessary copies for the courts above and transmitting 
the same ; the making of all copies called for by Tom, 
Dick, and Harry, and mailing them to these gentlemen ; 
the taking of all recognizances and reducing them to 
form ; the holding of all correspondence with attorneys 
and laity pertaining to court affairs ; the keeping of all 
accounts with lawyers, officers, witnesses, special justices, 
landlords, coal-dealers, wood-sawers, carpenters, janitors, 
washerwomen, and the county treasurer ; the taxing of 
all legal costs ; the collection of all moneys, and the pay- 
ment over of the same to the many to whom the dollars 
and driblets belong ; the making of all official returns, 
annual, quarterly, and special ; the making of all returns 
asked for by speculative moralists in the name of 
courtesy ; the answering orally of all questions important, 
unimportant, and nonsensical.; the hearing of all growls ; 
the providing of all record books and stationery ; the 
warding off of all intruders ; the encountering of all 
offensive smells from breaths, garments, pipes, and 
packets of evidence ; the refusing to betray secrets ; the 
objecting to be judge and attorney in one and the same 
case ; and more and more ad infinitum that can neither 
be summarized, understood, nor imagined. Add to this 
much, which would seem to be enough, on him, the 
judge who is also clerk, but holds his commission by a 
tenure like unto that of the Chief Justice of the Great 


THE CIRCUIT AND JURISDICTION. 


15 


Republic, devolves the obligation, known to no other 
judge on the face of the globe, of giving bond in a re- 
spectable sum, with good and sufficient sureties, for the 
faithful discharge of his official duties ! 

Such things it is, along with the labors done in the 
serener if not purer atmosphere of the bench, which 
put the judge who is also clerk in communication with 
the people of his bailiwick and make him many personal 
acquaintances of many sorts, and the recipient of many 
experiences of many peculiarities. 


II. 

THE CIRCUIT AND JURISDICTION. 

The circuit embraced four New England towns, Pow- 
hatan, Haddleburg, Sprigton, and Trelawney. Their 
aggregate population numbered some fifteen thousand 
souls, and their valuation aggregated some eight millions. 
The country was diversified. It abounded not in large 
hills, plains, pastures, woods, caves, grottoes, lakes, 
streams and streamlets, but in sizable ones. The soil, 
though sandy and rocky in patches, was comfortably 
productive. The climate was also not insalubrious. A 
principal feature of the region was the valley of the 
Powhatan, a noble little river that meandered its tortu- 
ous way oceanward through many a picturesque scene, 
and turned by its flow more wheels than any other wheel- 
turning river of like volume in any land of looms and 


1G 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


spindles. Besides the usual banks, stores, shops, saloons, 
booths, depots, dwelling-houses, school-houses, and 
meeting-houses, which make part of the thrift and civil- 
izing tendencies of a thriving New England section, there 
were some twenty mills, manufacturing cotton goods 
and woollen, cotton yarn and braids, felting, shoddy, 
cards, bobbins, pickers, mules, and axes. Two pros- 
perous railways coursed the territory and formed in one 
of the towns a not unimportant junction toward which 
poured travel and tramps from the flourishing cities of 
Boston, Worcester, Providence, and Hartford. The 
element of foreign population in the town thus favored 
by rail was exceedingly large. It is thought that the 
assertion may not be hazardous if the town be ranked in 
this respect as without a rival in the Puritan quarter, if 
in the Republic itself. The largest mills were in this 
town, the largest saloons, and the largest cemeteries. 
Irish, French, English, Scotch, German, Dutch, Nor- 
wegian, Swiss, and Italian, in a diminishing series corre- 
sponding to the order of the names, were the nationalities 
other than American represented in the mixed popula- 
tion of the circuit. 

The villages of the district were about as one to two of 
the mills, and therefore numbered in round number ten. 
Through one of them ran remorselessly the invisible 
State line, cutting in twain a meeting-house, a mill, a 
shop or two, and, as deposed in affidavits, so severing the 
castle of one citizen that he habitually slept under his 
roof with his head in one State and his heels in another. 
The unique situation was prolific of incidents, thrilling 
often, and sometimes romantic. As this book will deal 
in cool matters of fact and law and eschew the tlirob- 
bings of romance, an instance or two will be cited bear- 
ing on the dry matter only of jurisdiction. 


THE CIRCUIT AND JURISDICTION. 


17 


A constable once entered a mill with a warrant for his 
man, who was there. Defendant dexterously withdrew 
to the other end of the building, and stood in a foreign 
State defying the bailiff. For another, a deputy sheriff 
gave chase to an offender and seized him by the collar. 
A hasty view of the premises showed the arrest to have 
been made some feet over the line. “Hands off!” 
cried the collared culprit, and the cautious deputy relaxed 
his hold. Other hair-breadth escapes might be told in 
proof of the facilities afforded rogues by this funny 
village, 

“ . . . to sever and divide 
A hair ’twixt north and north-west side.” 

The above serve to illustrate the jurisdictional uncer- 
tainties which not seldom involved officers in vexation, 
and reminded the court that there was a breakwater con- 
stantly staying its proud waves. 

Criminally the court had jurisdiction concurrent or in- 
choate of all offences, and civilly of all cases where the 
debt or damages craved exceeded not the limit of three 
hundred dollars. For two years out of the ten, trials of 
civil actions were had by jury, when either party to the 
suit so elected and filed betimes his written wish. This 
mode of trial in the petty courts did not stand the test 
of trial. To the public it proved an expensive luxury, 
and, however it favored the lawyers, it famished the 
suitors and drove the Judge to the verge of despair. 

This is how it bore on some suitors. A “ trustee 
case” would be brought. Perhaps the defendant did 
not owe as claimed, or, owing, could not pay the debt 
without pinching his family. To compel him to terms 
the plaintiff’s attorney would demand a trial by jury. 
The trial must needs be deferred till a jury should be 
empanelled, and a jury could not be well empanelled 


18 


TEX YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


till there were cases enough on the jury list to warrant 
the expense and the display. Meantime the poor man 
was kept from his earnings, or, driven to the wall, paid 
what mayhap he did not owe. 

On the people this is how it told. A jury of twelve 
with the requisite supernumeraries, sitting for a week, 
with the cost of summoning, empanelling, and guarding 
them with a sheriff, would cost the county about $500, 
while the total amount of their verdicts would be large 
if it reached that sum. 

And this is the way it bore on the Judge. He had to 
disperse all the venires, do all the empanelling, all the 
jury excusing, all the jury charging, and all the jury 
paying off, and whenever for an hour or a moment he 
was not in mortal struggle with the jury, the lawyers, or 
the witnesses, he had about him a posse of impatient 
constables with impatient prisoners, hungering to be 
convicted or acquitted. So strong was his perpetual 
consciousness that the constables were after him that the 
Judge could not in any decent degree do himself justice 
as a jurist, and much less enjoy with any becoming dig- 
nity the occasion of the great event' of his district — the 
“ jury week. ” The law that produced this grievous state 
of things was, in a lucid interval of legislation, repealed, 
and one innocent man rescued from asylum gates ajar. 

Upon the abolishment of the office of coroner, all in- 
quests, in cases of death by violence or accident on rail- 
roads, occurring within the district, were held by the 
court. The commitment to hospital of insane persons 
and the examination of persons arrested for debt were 
powers which attached not to the court, but the Judge, 
and served, along with other scraps of personal service, 
to eke out his stipend, by dint of due economy, to the 
point of self-support. 


WHAT MADE HIM JUDGE? 


10 


The court sat daily, Sundays and legal holidays ex- 
cepted, holding sessions every other day in Powhatan 
and every other day in Trelawney. Mondays and 
Saturdays it heard civil cases, if any, and criminal as 
well, if any, and the other days was in criminal session 
altogether. The court commenced its daily sittings, as 
should be stated for one or more material reasons further 
on, in public rooms rented, furnished, and set apart 
specifically for the purpose, at nine of the clock in the 
forenoon, as by law required, and, under an eight-hour 
law of its own making, held itself very generally in 
session or easily accessible for session throughout the 
day, whether at Powhatan, where the Judge resided, or 
at Trelawney, where he also presided. 


III. 

WHAT MADE HIM JUDGE. 

The author enters upon the present chapter with 
entire confidence in the inability of the reader to ex- 
pound the conundrum of the caption. Yet he makes no 
doubt that the reader, here as heretofore, is rushing 
headlong, heedless of that divine proverb which declares 
it folly and shame unto him who answereth a matter be- 
fore he heareth it. It is as undoubtedly true as though 
he had spoken it outright that the reader has already 
made in his heart three several and positive conjectures 
in solution of the riddle here propounded, What made 


20 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


him judge f And it will be the province in part of this 
chapter to set forth specifically the conjectures, that it 
may appear in the end, as appear it did in the Book of 
Judges of old, that riddles of the Samsonian type are 
not easily expounded. 

First. The reader hath said in his heart that ten years 
and a little more ago the author of this work was an 
attorney at law, of high standing at the bar and of high 
repute as a citizen, engaged in a lucrative practice, and 
pursuing his profession without a desire or a dream of 
forsaking it for any position of honor or emolument 
whatsoever. The exigencies of community requiring a 
court, the Powhatan Yalley Police Court was created, 
and it became necessary to procure an admirable judge. 
The appointing power, lifting its head above the piles of 
petitions piled thereabout by eager applicants, cast its 
eye beyond the murky sea of vulgar aspirants for a man 
of capacity, disinterested benevolence, and a self-sacrific- 
ing soul. Such a man the eye of public weal descried in 
this author, and thereupon the hand of authority took 
him from liis chosen, beloved, and lucrative profession, 
and placed him a willing sacrifice upon the Powhatan 
Bench. 

Second . The reader hath said in his heart that ten 
years and a little more ago the author of this book was a 
cousin, nephew, or brother-in-law of the appointing 
power, or remotely related to the cousin, nephew, 
brother-in-law, step-son, or step-sister of the appointing 
power, and the appointing power, regardless of the 
common weal, and with a mind fatally bent on the mis- 
chiefs of nepotism, did wilfully and flagitiously appoint 
the merest pettifogger of the Powhatan Yalley to the 
responsible office of its judge, to the great scandal and 
lasting damage of all good people of the commonwealth. 


WHAT MADE HIM JUDGE? 


21 

Third . Tlie reader hath said in his heart that ten years 
and a little more ago the author of this book was a 
politician, who had at divers times and in sundry ways 
made himself serviceable and superserviceable in the 
caucuses of his town and the local conventions round 
about, and had to a limited extent taken the stump and 
cried aloud for the powers that were, and thereupon, in 
the days of the creation of the Powhatan Yalley Police 
Court, the author as politician aforesaid presented a 
numerously signed petition and numerous testimonials 
from politicians of larger growth to the appointing 
power, and the appointing power, esteeming these docu- 
ments confirmations strong as proofs of Holy Writ that 
the petitioner was 4 4 capable” and “ honest,” elevated 
him to the Powhatan Judgeship, in blind disregard of 
candidates far more meritorious, whose virtue was not 
the virtue of political activity. 

These are the readers’ expositions : to all which the 
author 'returns a clear, sharp, and decisive negative. 
This would seem sufficient. It is, however, best to be 
logically explicit. Besides, it is due to the reader that 
he have credit for some discernment, which he has as- 
suredly shown. While there is not one pebble of foun- 
dation for his first and second conjecturings, there is a 
modicum of truth in the third. True enough, as he 
seems to have divined, though his first gropings for the 
truth exhibit him as blundering upon it rather than pos- 
sessing aptitude for great moral verities ; true enough, 
all public office-holding of whatever grade or degree is 
fruit that grows on some branch, twig, shoot, or sucker 
of the tree of jiolitical activity. Unlike rules in general, 
this is a rule without an exception. Easy it is and per- 
haps well enough to say what is once in a while said : 
Behold a case where the office came to the man, and did 


22 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


not wait for the man to come to it ! But this is a mis- 
take. Never went out office unto any man. Offices are 
stationary, inanimate, and without locomotion. Since 
the days of Washington, Carver, Alfred, Cincinnatus, 
Moses, Noah, it has ever so been, and in the nature and 
fitness of things it must ever so be. As the mountain 
would not go to Mahomet, but required the prophet to 
go to it, so with offices. They will not budge, however 
they may beckon ; and however they may allure, they 
will not be allured by the lute of any Apollo. Offices, 
indeed, are mountains varying in altitudes, difficulties of 
ascent, and veins of precious ore, and no mountain ever 
lay down or bowed its summit peak for mortal man to 
bestride. The mountain of the Powhatan Valley, so to 
speak, did not bow to this author, and never would he 
have compassed its dizzy height had he not been less or 
more a lively politician. 

To this extent then the reader has expounded the 
riddle. But how far he is from the bottom Fact, which 
this chapter shall presently heave to the surface and the 
light of day ! Not because he was a lawyer eminent at 
the bar and of large retainers, little disposed though he 
be to discourage his readers from entertaining that 
pleasant suspicion if so they are inclined ; not because he 
was related to the appointing power by ties of blood, 
marriage, or Masonry, glad as he would be to trace rela- 
tionship to an appointing power whose wisdom has ren- 
dered illustrious the name of the Powhatan Valley ; not 
because he was a wire-puller, a striker, a caucus-carrier, 
a fugleman, a stump orator— in a word, a scurvy 
politician who gets him glass eyes and seems to see the 
things he does not — not for any one or all these reasons 
combined or however associated did it come to pass ten 
years and a little more ago that he was made Judge. 


WEAK EYES. 


23 


The reason, though very ocular, is far more occult, yet 
lies it in two tiny words’ so hintful of twinkle, twinkle, 
twinkle, that the intelligent reader ought to have divined 
the cause in a twinkling. "Weak eyes wooed and won 
him the wig. 


IY. 

WEAK EYES. 

If the reader should wander into the fancy that it is 
not within the scope of this work to introduce an essay 
on weak eyes, it would be not unlike his other wander- 
ings. To the mind of the author this is precisely the 
place to descant on the infirmity. In point of fact, weak 
eyes are at the very bottom of this production, and the 
foundation-stone of it. But for these, as has already 
transpired, the author would not have been what for one 
seventh of the space of the allotted life of man he was, 
and it follows as day the night that but for the same 
cause the production would not have been produced. 
If, therefore, any reason can be assigned why a literary 
w T ork should not treat of the very thing which originated 
and inspired it, the author would feel highly gratified to 
have the reason set forth. Confidently believing that 
no such reason exists, he proceeds to carry out his pur- 
pose and discourse, as he may be able, upon the theme 
of this chapter. 

It may be asserted without any fear of contradiction 
from those who are at all conversant with the matter, 


PA TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 

tliat few if any of the afflictions that take hold of the 
flesh of man and obstruct his progress in the pathway of 
life exceed in power the power of weak eyes. Most 
afflictions of this class are temporary and otherwise cir- 
cumscribed in effect. Fevers run and are away. 
Broken limbs reunite and resume business. Wounds 
heal and flicker into scars. Toothache is transient. 
Rheumatism is on and off, principally off. Colic is 
curable, and lumbago is limited. But weak eyes are a 
perpetual grief. Like other misfortunes of colossal size, 
the picture cannot be drawn, but only outlined in hints. 
To depict a skeleton of it is the most that may be done. 
Intelligence must be relied on for the rest, but no intel- 
ligence will suffice unless the intelligent person who 
views the skeleton be himself weak-eyed. 

W eak eyes can read but little, nor read that little long. 
Weak eyes eschew light insomuch that the eying of 
people eye to eye is sunshine. Weak eyes are never 
unconscious quite of pain. Weak eyes are incessantly 
self-provoked that they should look so fair yet feel so 
foul. Weak eyes hail cloudy weather and revel in a 
rainy day. Weak eyes water with sympathy at the sight 
of a man in goggles. Weak eyes are not credited on 
oath. Weak eyes, in war or peace, are never exempt 
from draft. Weak eyes suffer long and are kind, vaunt 
not themselves, are not puffed up, seek not their own, 
but stop here and envy another’s. Weak eyes marvel 
at the eagle, kindling his undazzled eyes at the full mid- 
day beam. Weak eyes cannot consider the heavens by 
night, scarce can glance at Arcturus, Orion, and the 
Pleiades, and perforce abjure astronomy. Weak eyes 
yearn for solitude ; love to steal a while away where none 
intrudes ; love to wander on the lonely shore and drink 
a cordial in the spray of breakers. Weak eyes cannot 


WEAK EYES. 


25 


well sleep o’ nights. Weak eyes shudder at the spec- 
tacle of a fellow-traveller reading fine print in the cars. 
Weak eyes continually wonder at the incredulity and in- 
compassion of the strong-eyed. Weak eyes are full of 
inquiry whether they who think they stand, better not 
take heed lest they fall. Weak eyes are powerless be- 
fore breakfast. Weak eyes shun nocturnal entertain- 
ments and all other evening things that light a candle. 
Weak eyes dread the sunrise, would hasten sunset, yet 
bewail the long nights of winter because of gas. Weak 
eyes know all about spectacles. Weak eyes love dark- 
ness rather than light. Weak eyes hope on and hope on, 
and are at length without hope in the world, well know- 
ing from specifics tried throughout the alphabets of 
pharmacy, pennyroyals, and the laying on of hands, that 
not poppy nor mandragora nor all the drowsy syrups of 
the East shall medicine them again to sweet sleep or 
communion sweet with the immortal minds of history. 

These are some of the incapacities, unhappinesses, 
proclivities, repugnances, despondencies, and weaknesses 
of weak eyes. And now it is nowise doubtful that ques- 
tions are rising in the reader’s mind that will not be put 
off by silence or circumlocution. They are easily an- 
ticipated, and, lest space should give out if they were 
reduced seriatim to form, the author will, for his own 
convenience as well as his reader’s, condense and boil 
them down into one comprehensive, pointed interroga- 
tory. 

If his eyes were so weak that he could not keep on as a 
lawyer , how could he bestride the Bench of Powhatan 
and keep on as Judge f 

It is a fair question, and it shall be answered. It is to 
be remembered that clouds have silver linings, that long 
roads have turns, that poverty is not without riches, and 


26 


TEST YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


that calamities are not without compensations. These 
are famous and imperishable sayings, whose verity, if 
doubted ever, may be doubted no longer, for the author 
has proved them all they are represented to be by prov- 
ing that weak eyes are not without strength. When 
first he bestrid the Powhatan steed he did not expect to 
keep on. He did not see how he could, without straying 
off into the ditches that beset the roadside of judicial 
avenues, streets, and lanes. Remembering the critical, 
it may be hypercritical, habits of the bar, he was un- 
happy in the thought that, even if he should keep on, 
his equestrianship would be the object of much fun-pok- 
ing, and the consciousness of his zigzag courses would be 
to him a continual apprehension that the worst might at 
any time happen. Indeed, it is not too much to say that 
it was with fear and trembling that he took the reins and 
started onward, weak-eyed, into the Daedalian country. 
But necessity hath ever been the mother of invention, 
and it turned out that, as invention in the nick of time 
plucked him an attorney, like a brand from the burning, 
out of the perilous pit of digging and peering among 
reports, text-books, technicalities, and note-taking, and 
mounted him — the reader knows where — so did a child of 
the same resourceful mother not only steady him in the 
saddle, but perform almost the miracle of givingsight to 
the blind. 

Fortune, ere she plunges her unfavorites into struggle 
with adversity, is apt to wait till they have equipped 
themselves with some slight means of warfare. Even so 
did she in the case of the author of this book. Not 
wholly armorless was he ushered into the ambushes of 
judicial combat. Through fitful gleanings in days agone 
he had gleaned and laid up such stock of law as to suffice 
him for ten years on all ordinary adjudicatory occasions. 


WEAK EYES. 


27 


This he could measure off, apply, and deliver with his 
eyes shut. The ordinary complaint, warrant, subpoena, 
mittimus, recognizance, etc. he managed to draw with 
one eye open at a time, letting each of the pair take 
turns. In the same manner he wrote out records, kept 
accounts, made copies, surveyed prisoners in the dock, 
juries in the box, witnesses on the stand, parties litigant, 
attorneys attendant, callers complainant, and the gaping 
crowd. Then on extraordinary occasions he had recourse 
to an expedient that never failed him in the most trying 
emergency. Such, of course, were the occasions when 
grave questions of law arose to be settled once and for- 
ever. To meet emergencies which were so calculated to 
test the metal of the magistrate, the method adopted was 
to magnify as much as possible the point raised — to 
imply in no uncertain words that thereby hung a tale of 
no small . magnitude, and to insinuate to the attorneys 
that the court cared not how far they went to the bottom 
of a principle so fundamental. The attorney who raised 
the point was thus immediately moved by commendable 
pride to ransack the reports and the authorities else- 
where ; and the attorney on the other side, not to be out- 
done, would do the same, and when they had done it 
they would come into court with their briefs and books 
and talk their law at great length, and the Judge mean- 
while would survey them with one eye open and one 
shut. Then, finally, when they were all out of breath 
and law too, the Judge would reserve his opinion, go 
home, ruminate, balance the matter a while with closed 
eyes, resurrect from the depths of his consciousness the 
cited authorities, fashion some involved sentences, weav- 
ing in touches of Latin and bracing the fabric with sun- 
dry oak-strong maxims, not forgetting to praise the 
lawyers for their industry and good sense, and so having 


28 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


formulated an opinion, after keeping it back a sufficient 
time for appearance’s sake, would deliver it with an air 
of gravity. In this manner and way did he for ten 
years keep astride the Powhatan nag, and for aught he 
could judge the equestrianism was equally as satisfactory 
as it would have been had he not had weak eyes. 


Y. 

UPS AND DOWNS OF THE JUDGE’S SALARY. 

Notably in one of the years of the ten which this 
volume historifies there was an outbreak of reform. 
The bubble-blower of inflation had been abroad in the 
land, and the lurid sun of Black Friday at length dawned 
upon the bubble-blown country, and many were the bub- 
bles that burst. Times went from brisk to blue, and 
lingering dull and dolorous, Reform lifted her shining 
head to inquire why these things were so, and, if might 
be, disperse the clouds which hung like a pall over the 
dearly beloved and dearly betaxed people. Loud rose 
her voice on every stump from stem to stern of the 
alleged imperilled ship of state. Tradition relates that 
the ship’s masts were saw’ed oif several feet above deck, 
and then sawed into sections of requisite length and used 
for stumps. However that may be, it is certain there 
was such a sufficiency of stumps that the good vessel may 
be said to have been for the time more a ship of stump 
than a ship of state. The oratory was as the noise of 


UPS AND DOWNS OF THE JUDGE’S SALARY. 


29 


many waters. In tones stentorian it proclaimed that 
pretty much all things were wrong and must be righted, 
and Reform was the regime to right them. The offices 
were too many, the officers were too crooked, and the 
salaries were suckers. The officials were sleek, plump, 
and fat, but alas ! the poor people were walking 
skeletons. Wherefore this disparity ? The corruption 
and extravagance of the reigning party could alone ex- 
plain. Down with the part}', dismiss the officials, dock 
the salaries. Drive out the money-changers, overhaul 
the books, wash down the State-House steps, make a new 
deal. Yerily there w r as a storm, not so much in sooth 
upon the deep, but upon the deck, which was the scene 
assuredly of a great agitation. 

It is probable that never were crew and passengers so 
excited before concerning the safety of the ship, when 
the ship was so trim and the sea so tranquil. Accord- 
ingly this reform storm here and now revived in memory 
is chronicled among the strangest of the strange in the 
annals of political gales and hurricanes. Strangest part of 
it all was that, though Reform did not elect her man, 
the elect were so elated at their accustomed election that 
the ardor of the roaring reformers dwindled out of sight 
in the remarkable reform zeal of the unreformed, who 
had declared the reform of the reformers not necessary. 
Consequently there was reform, and, sad to relate, it 
spent its chief fury upon the police courts of the unre- 
formed land. Other prophets of Israel were stoned, but 
the heads of the police judges — these 'were the especial 
bull’s-eyes which the rocks of reform were aimed to hit, 
and, as it were, plunk out. It seemed as if the State 
had arisen in brickbats and was warring for dear life 
upon the little courts whose goodly mission it was by 
State appointment to stop brickbat-throwing. 


30 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


True, it did not transpire upon protracted inquiry that 
tlie books had not been well kept and the business well 
done. True, it did not transpire that the offending 
officials had been delinquent, defaultant, or otherwise 
derelict. True, it did not transpire that they were has- 
tening to the sin of riches or any other sin, save as they 
were barely making ends meet through the sin of parsi- 
mony. True, it did not transpire that their pay was 
more than it had been time out of mind with correspond- 
ent office-holding. True, it did not transpire that the 
local constituencies in a solitary instance clamored or 
whispered for the retrenchment. Of all that transpired 
in a season of extreme and expensive investigation, this 
and this only transpired — that there was an excitement 
at the State House of the State, and the state of things 
there imperatively demanded that something should grow 
out of an extraordinary scare. And there did. The 
salary of the Judge who is the author of this book was 
docked ! A similar fate befell all the judges who were 
also clerks, and all the judges who were not also clerks, 
and all the clerks who were not also judges, throughout 
the sovereign Commonwealth. This in the main was the 
mouse the mountain brought forth. 

And now the author is about to make a revelation to 
illustrate, emphasize, and embalm the consistency which 
is the bright and beautiful jewel of intelligent legisla- 
tures annually assembling and legislating for the weal and 
glory of a free and independent people. When the au- 
thor took the office which he was destined to hold for so 
many years and become an author, he took it with eves 
wide open— wide open that the salary was low . Thus he 
thought, and they who counselled him to the ambition so 
said. But he reasoned, in common with kind friends, 
along this devious line : Though the emolument forbids, 


UPS AND DOWNS OF THE JUDGE’S SALARY. 31 

the honor tempts ; though the future is uncertain, the 
lawgivers are reasonable ; though eyes that are weak 
are likely to break irremediably down in the rough-and- 
tumble of the practitioner, they may serve all the useful 
and urgent purposes of the judge. He therefore abdi- 
cated a respectable practice in that profession “ ancient 
as magistracy, noble as virtue, and necessary as justice,” 
and entered industriously, if not brilliantly, upon the 
duties of the twofold office which it is one of the aims of 
this publication to keep steadily before the reader’s mind 
— the consolidated office of judge and cleric. For two 
years he labored therein, and at the expiration thereof 
felt himself possessed of an experience and a record. 
Equipped and oppressed therewith, he went as a loyal 
citizen before the intelligent Legislature of his adored 
and native Common wealth. Respectfully he was 
awarded a hearing by a learned committee duly author- 
ized to that end, and, without a glimmer of vanity in 
the assertion, he here avers that his success outshone the 
accomplishment of the mightiest Julius himself. Veni, 
vidi , vici was Caesar’s. The author’s was greater be- 
cause it was a triumph not of arms, but of the argument 
of arithmetic and the assurance of right. Such did the 
learned committee concede it to be, for ere the petitioner 
had advanced half through his statement of labors done 
and financial results wrought, the chairman lifted his 
pocket-handkerchief in token of a disposition to surren- 
der, and a parley ensued. The cornered committee in- 
quired on what terms the surrender would be permitted, 
and, being told, unanimously responded, “ Cheap 
enough !” and thereupon drew a bill on the spot 
embracing the exact terms demanded, and that bill 
passed both branches of the Great and General Court, 
nemine contradicente. 


32 TEX YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 

Five years rolled away ere the squall of reform struck 
or pretended to strike, to undo that piece of charitable 
legislation. Meantime items of new work were added 
to official duties to increase measurably the labors of the 
Judge. Meantime, too, the effect of a general law had 
picked off various items which had been to him a legiti- 
mate source of small revenue. But, what is more, mean- 
time the business of the court had been so conducted 
that the incontestable figures showed that it approached 
nearer the financial point of self-sustainment than any 
other court, Dot only of the county, but the whole State. 
Yet when the squall struck, so haphazard was Reform in 
the throwing of rocks, that, bating a case or two of ex- 
cessive cruelty to animals, the clip of the author’s 
annuity was the unkindest cut of all. It was clipped 
33J per cent. This reduced the salary 16J- per cent be- 
low its original figure, and reduced the salaried one both 
to poverty and humiliation. 

The knock-down argument in the councils of Re- 
trenchment, it may not be impertinent to relate, was the 
favorite one emanating from the most conspicuous re- 
trencher, himself a bloated bondholder, who solemnly 
declared, to the discomfiture of all objectors, that he 
would come under bonds to fill all the judicial and 
clerical offices of the Commonwealth with hands from 
his factory, who would be glad to take the places at pay 
far less than the least that Reform proposed to pay. 
Nothing could withstand the force of this argument, 
nothing ought, and nothing did. 

One year more glided into the silent past, and with it 
an intelligent legislature. The froth of reform had not 
wholly subsided. How could so great a foam settle into 
the lucid liquid of justice to judges in a space so brief ? 
It could not, and it did not. But it was a matter of life 


UPS AND DOWN’S OF THE JUDGE’S SALARY. 


33 


and death with the author, and, though all others should 
be, as thus far they had been, deterred by the glister of 
the pruning-knife, which seemed still to flash round their 
wigs and wiglets, he resolved to face retrenchment in the 
very temple of Reform, die though he should in the 
harness of his audacity. Alone, with pace slow but 
firm, he advanced, his petition in one hand and the same 
old figures in the other. Imagine his surprise at a re- 
ception most gracious and a responsiveness very cordial. 
Imagine also his surprise to find himself followed by a 
host of like petitioners, to be accorded a hearing equally 
gracious and an assent equally generous. Imagine his 
surprise again, which was no surprise at all, to find that 
Reform in blowing overbad blown down those most who 
had raised the wind where least it ought to have blown. 
Still, truth requires the statement that there can be no 
violation cf the golden rule, in legislation more than 
elsewhere, which will not work a temporary demoraliza- 
tion. Therefore it was that the breach of the rule, 
which this chapter laments, had so far left blunt the 
legislative perceptions of right and wrong that the 
Judge’s salary was not restored to the figures that clad 
and comforted him ere the brickbat of Reform hit his 
wigged head, 

Hot to keep the reader longer in the dark, his annual 
pay for about two years was $1200 ; then for about five 
years $1500 ; then for near two years $1000 ; and lastly 
$1200, just what it was in the beginning. Thus was he 
encouraged by the Legislature of his State to believe that 
after an experience of eight years, to say nothing of that 
term of fidelity, he was worth precisely as much in office 
as he was without any experience whatever. 


34 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


YI. 

WHY DID HE NOT RESIGN ? 

It is a fair question, and a decent respect for tlie 
opinions of mankind requires a response. Why — be- 
cause, say you, reader, they never resign ? Ah ! yes, 
they do. They resign — some because reduced to lower 
terms ; others because induced by higher ; some because 
the office gets tired of the man, and even some because 
the man gets tired of the office. Of the latter it is 
granted that the number is extremely small compared 
with the number who are waiting to take their places. 
The saying that “none ever resign” has grown very 
naturally out of the impatience of the innumerable 
throng of ever- willing Barkuses. But the saying is not 
true. The other half of it — “ few die” — is also libel. 
Statistics show that the rate of mortality with office- 
holders is about the same as with any corresponding 
number of the human species. Here, too, it is only the 
impatience of the aspirants that makes them think that 
the Great Archer rarely hits the incumbents. The 
newspaper reader needs but to tax his memory a little to 
recall various instances of official honors bestowed upon 
deceased personages, who, in shuffling off their mortal 
coil, shuffled off the robes of office with it. It may, in- 
deed, be true that it would have been better sometimes 
for their fame if they had shuffled off the robes before 
they were constrained to part with the coil ; but the 
fact, nevertheless, remains, that they died with the robes 
on. It is therefore high time that this pretended 
truism, that the office-holder seldom dies, died out of the 


WHY DID HE HOT RESIGH? 


35 


language. The temptations to office-holding would seem 
to be enough without any intimation of an unusual 
longevity therein, much less without raising the delusion 
that office has any armor to keep the grim messenger at 
hay. 

But all this is quite foreign to the immediate question 
m hand, Why did he not. resign ? Yes, why — with his 
salary reduced to a thousand a year — why did he not 
resign f Well, because he was not as one without hope 
in the world. lie had remarked the variability of the 
law-making power — how it had undone one year what it 
had done the year before ; how it apparently had no 
confidence whatever that what it had solemnly enacted 
it solemnly meant. He had observed that the law-mak- 
ing power, though undeniably a grave body, did not un- 
commonly go by fits and starts, and that, however it had 
a weakness for maltreating meritorious constituents, it 
would sooner or later borrow sense of the potent con- 
stituent, and 

Right with justice whom with power it wronged.” 

Taking this charitable view of the lords of creation, 
the official of the shrivelled salary was emboldened to 
enter diligently on the inquiry whether he had best hold 
on to his despised ermine and face a frowning fortune. 
Nor had he sooner entered upon the inquest than he 
found his difficulties just, begun. There was the fact 
staring him in the face that his shrunk stipend was pain- 
fully inadequate to the support of his proud wife and 
children, and at the same time to keep himself in a state 
befitting his station. Proud his pets had grown, from a 
protracted consciousness that the head of the family was 
a magnate. Never would his house be the place of 
peace it had been unless he could gladden the domestic 


36 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


scene with occasional contributions beyond the mere 
necessaries of life. To protect liis castle against the 
undermining influences of murmuring inmates — this was 
of the last importance to a man who would do the pub- 
lic’s dirty work and meanwhile hold up liis head. 
Should he borrow to keep off the wolf, and keep up ap- 
pearances till legislation might repent and legislate 
lucidly ? Added to a very strong native aversion to 
living “ on tick, ” there was the very grave doubt 
whether he had any credit u to tick” it on. Besides, 
having never borrowed, he felt he should make exceed- 
ingly awkward work of it in commencing. If he had 
only understood the art as he had seen others practise it, 
it is altogether probable that he would have effected a 
loan, “ native aversion” to the contrary notwithstand- 
ing. Being without the art, he shrank intuitively from 
the game of borrowing Peter to pay Paul. In any 
attempt to play that little game, he felt fully persuaded 
that he would expose himself to a double danger — first, 
the danger of disgrace ; for who that essays to borrow 
and fails because a bungler at it, is not in ignominy ? and 
second, the danger of being put to this detestable ques- 
tion, “ Why don’t you resign, and go to doing some- 
thing else ?” 

All this dreary time now has the author been coming 
to this odious question, Why don’t you resign, and go to 
doing something else ? If now he could only make up 
the face he seems once to have made up at the thought 
of the interrogatory, and the reader could but see the 
face, he fancies that this whole chapter would be written 
and be the crowning chapter of the book. Go to doing 
something else ! As if seven years before he was reduced 
he did not quit “ doing something else” to go to doing 
what reduction would ask him resignedly to quit doing ! 


WHY DID HE HOT RESIGH? 


37 


As if in doing wliat he had been doing he had not un- 
done himself for doing something else ! As if with a 
jot of justice the State could use seven of the best years 
of a man’s life and then cut down his pay 33^ per cent 
without cutting down his work a whit, and say to the old 
servant, “ If you don’t like it, lump it” ! As if a man 
could do that to a man and escape contempt ! As if a 
man could do that to a dog, and everybody not take sides 
with Rover ! Why did he not resign ? W ell, because 
it is perhaps better to 

“ . . . bear those ills we have, 

Than fly to others that we know not of.” 

Nevertheless, that it may be known from this time 
henceforth that he seriously contemplated resignation, 
the author begs leave, to embody in this work, in jpei'- 
petuam rei memoriam, a letter which in the heat of the 
hour he penned to the Governor of the Commonwealth, 
but which for prudential reasons he did not transmit to 
his Excellency, as follows : 

To the Goverhor of the Commohwealth. 

Sir : I hereby resign my position as Standing Justice 
of the Powhatan Yalley Police Court, and respectfully 
request that my successor may be appointed and qualified 
as soon as may be. 

In tendering my resignation, it seems to me not inap- 
propriate to append the reasons. To name them in a 
word, the salary of the office, as reduced, is inadequate. 
Before the reduction it is believed to have been meas- 
urably less than the service performed called for. It 
follows that, if I were to continue in the office, discharg- 
ing its duties as in duty bound, 1 would be giving to the 
State some $500 per annum. This, 1 regret to say, is 


38 TEN - YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 

beyond my means. In love for the Commonwealth, I 
hope no one surpasses me, and few things would gratify 
me more than to grant my native State an annuity ; but 
such are my circumstances that, after my wife and chil- 
dren are suitably clothed and fed, I am without resources 
to contribute to the public treasure, save as a moderate 
taxpayer. 

It may be asked, Why do I say thus much % Because, 
unfortunately, it is but another form of saying what 
ought not to go unsaid— that the State has been of late 
put in the attitude, if not of requiring, of expecting a 
man to do her work for one third or so less than worth. 
Hot, therefore, to say it would make me seem to adopt 
the view that the State means to drive a hard bargain 
with her servants. This imputation upon the Common- 
wealth 1 resent. Her history does not so read. 

Is it said that the Legislature inquired what the work 
of my office is worth, and ascertained it to be $1000 per 
annum ? In dissenting from the conclusion, I have this 
advantage over the Legislature — I 7mow the worth of 
the work by six and a half years’ performance thereof ; 
know the time it takes, the patience it absorbs, the 
preparation it implies, the experience it profits by, and 
know whatever else, to ordinary intelligence, is wrapped 
up in, and so forth. 

But did not the Legislature inquire of these things ? 
Here also I have some advantage. Invited, I went be- 
fore its committee to that end appointed — went with the 
multitude who so went, and found the time not only too 
limited for the inquiry to permit the committee to in- 
quire if they would, but the committee so limited in 
their ability to master the subject-matter in hand as to 
be painfully inapt to understand what was addressed to 
them without inquiry. Accordingly, in common with 


WHY HID IIE NOT RESIGN? 


39 


the many others there invited and present, having cast a 
few pearls, I withdrew to the sterner stuff courts are 
made of, persuaded that however the court of the under- 
signed was earning its salary, the committee were not 
likely to earn theirs by any acknowledgment of it. 

It should seem that the committee, in their graduation 
of my salary as well as that of some others, attached a 
very disproportionate value to the honor of the office. 
It is quite impossible to escape this conclusion from the 
glimpse it was permitted me to have of them as they sat 
in state. The gravity with which they arose superior to 
their business gave but too certain proof that honor with 
them outweighs many a vile shilling. 

Of course, these few suggestions touch the teeming 
topic of “ Retrenchment and Reform,” which the Legis- 
lature may fondly hope it has grappled with to some 
purpose. It is, however, respectfully submitted that, 
if the inaptitude of the sitting Legislature to legislate in 
the matter of reform has been as apparent in other 
localities as in the judicial district covered by this resig- 
nation, the people of the State, in choosing their next 
legislators, will be apt to elect representatives. 

Yery respectfully, your obedient servant, 

Aaron Wiglittle. 


Powhatan, April 21, 1879, 


40 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


VII. 

VARIETY IN MONOTONY. 

Abiding as was the consciousness that within certain 
limits lie was supreme in authority, constant as was the 
satisfaction that to him community looked wisely or 
otherwise as the protector of its peace, pleasurable as 
were the emotions arising out of frequent invitations to 
lend charm and eclat to public and other occasions of 
local size by his presence and benediction, there was yet 
in the routine of the court a monotony, an ennui which 
only the strong resolution and great fortitude with which 
nature had endowed the Judge could for the space of the 
tenth part of a whole century enable him to endure. 

A painful sameness there was in the turbid waters of 
the court’s sea as it ebbed and flowed, and ruffled and 
slept and broke and foamed with little variation, week 
after week, month after month, and year after year 
odoriferously — in the craft nearing and receding that 
told of assaults and drunks and disturbances and nui- 
sances and pilferings and peddlings. The bark whose 
manifest opened up the dolphin of a daring tramp, the 
shark of an embezzlement, the swordfish of a burglary, 
was a sight refreshing rather, and even there was at 
times an involuntary longing for the whale of a murder ! 
Then the same old faces of the skippers of the schooners, 
though smiling and friendly and bringing tidings from 
the main, was tiresome, as was the crowd on the 
wharves and round the landings, with the same dress, 
slang, look,. and laughter. Still more wearisome was the 
treadmill toil of the custom-house, making the same 


VARIETY IH MOKOTONY. 


41 


entrances and clearances, inspecting the same particulars, 
spotting the same smugglers, weighing and gauging the 
same cargoes, casting the same columns, folding and 
fumbling the same papers, rendering the same accounts, 
and signing everlastingly the same old name, name, 
name, till one grew weary of his autograph, and wished 
that, like many a wretch- he wot of, he had an alias, or a 
lodge in some vast wilderness where no signature to sign 
was known or necessary.* 

All this and much more that tattled of the briny 
deep, though he liked the sea and from a boy had wan- 
toned with its breakers, was wasting and perilous to the 
flesh and spirit of the Judge when his view and exercise 
were circumscribed to the Baltic or Mediterranean of a 
police court. Yet as there is unity in diversity, so is 
there variety in monotony, and apart from occasional 
things, such as excursions, regattas, and sham fights in 
the harbor, that broke here and there the monotone of 
his seaside life, the Judge had a never-failing source of 
refreshment and diversion. It was his circuit. From 
town to town he came and went. Every other day 
he went to Trelawney, and every other day he came to 

* In the period embraced by these annals the author estimates that 
he has signed his name officially and semi-officially 46,000 times. 
This is believed to be more times than any one man ought to sign 
his name in a life-time, however lengthened out. There is a grain of 
egotism in any single act of signature-setting, even when one signs 
his name in fun, and more and more as he does it in earnest. An 
official autograph is presumably in dead earnest. It follows that a 
frequent repetition of the act, in a protracted official term, must 
needs cultivate much the vice of egotism. If there be aught egotisti- 
cal in this book the author attributes it largely to the cause of much 
name-signing as judge. For this cause, among others, long terms of 
office-holding are to be deprecated. A life tenure is to the last 
degree objectionable. Rotation is the thing, and let the wheel re- 
volve pretty fast. 


42 


TEK YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


Powliatan, and he went and came in miles by rail the 
goodly number of seven. When now and then he did 
not enjoy the luxury of riding on a “ pass,” which was 
now and then, for thus often the superintendent would 
be tight, or a spasm of reform would seize the directors, 
or the State in a spasm would alarm the corporations 
into a very discriminating issuance of these charming 
tidbits of pasteboard, much to the grief of the officials 
and other friends of the soulless bodies corporate, who 
would be consequently cut off from their tidbits and feel 
what many a heart has proved true, that, no matter what 
the wealth or what the office, riches and dignity alike 
seem to be enhanced if transported over a railway by 
virtue of a pass — think how it would dwarf a President 
of the Republic to be seen wearing a coarse and cancelled 
station ticket stuck in his hat ; think how it would be- 
little a Vanderbilt to be seen feeling in his pocket for 
the like ; think how it would reduce a Ju — when now 
and then, as the author was saying, he did not enjoy the 
luxury of riding on a “pass,” he had the exceeding 
pleasure of riding on a “ season” paid for out of his re- 
trenched salary, since it happened that what time his pay 
was most docked, by a singular infelicitous coincidence 
of providences, off went his pass. Accordingly, in 
either event he greatly enjoyed his every other day ride 
— on the “ pass,” because he felt full surely his great- 
ness a-ripening, and on the “season,” because he was 
keenly alive to the independence of paying his fare. 

Nor is this all that served to relieve the wear and 
tedium of court-house dittoism. It was pastime to the 
judicial deadhead or independent, what for the time he 
chanced to be, as he journeyed back and forth on the 
train, to note the varieties of the human family that do 
not seem to be born as the sparks fly upward unto those 


YARIETY IN’ MONOTONY. 


43 


peculiar troubles of which it is the mission of police 
magistracy to take judicial note. Enforced by impaired 
vision to total abstinence from reading the Herald in 
the cars, he indulged, as he was able, in perusing the 
tomes of human nature in the cars. Remembering that 
Knickerbocker had long ago told him that everybody 
was a volume of human nature, he could not but rejoice 
every time he boarded a train that he entered a library 
not made by hands, and, though weak of eyes, was per- 
mitted to turn over the leaves of the books and read the 
head-lines, if not the entire contents. Many of the head- 
lines are engraved upon his memory. 

They spoke of earnest men breathing the breath of 
business ; earnest women on shopping intent ; gentry 
and fashion starting forth to pluck the sweets of travel 
or returning laden with spoil ; finely arrayed ladies 
devouring delicious stories ; cheerful scholars with 
budgets of books, creeping not like snail, but speeding 
cityward to school ; Canadian emigrants with expectation 
in their eye at sight of the flag ; troops of minstrels, 
dramatists, gymnasts, necromancers, hornblowers, fid- 
dlers, and pipers with travelled looks and stagy man- 
ners, leaking the last performance and snuffing the next ; 
newsboys with their various rhetoric and elocution ; 
bright-buttoned conductors, always polite but never two 
in the same way ; brakemen sturdy at the wheel and hope- 
ful of promotion ; the interesting mistakes of uneducated 
passengers and educated ; their unfeigned surprise that 
nobody told them ere they blundered ; the strict obser- 
vance of the posted rule, “ Passengers are requested to 
leave the car by the forward door the insistance of 
the car-taking throng to get aboard before the car-leav- 
ing throng make room ; the grief of some and the grace 
of others in managing bundles ; the queerness of the 


44 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


query, “ Is this seat occupied ?” when plainly enough it 
is not, and the other query, u Is this seat engaged ?” 
when plainly enough engagements of that sort are of no 
binding force ; the disposition of some and indisposition 
of others to sit alone ; the contrivances contrived to 
effect the solitude ; the sorry failures of the nice-laid 
plans ; the astonishing difference of people in respect of 
sociability, varying from extreme chattiness and scrape- 
acquaintiveness to sullen reticence and repulsion ; their 
difference in modesty, varying from talk heard the 
car over to the gentlest of conversational tones ; the 
creatures who never get into a car and take a seat and 
sit, but ramble over the train from tender to tail, some 
to see who is aboard they know, and some for they know 
not what ; the politeness that rises to seat a lady ; the 
practicalness that does not ; the geniuses that habitually 
prefer the smoking-car, though not smokers or card- 
players ; the reluctance of some females to sit with 
males, and even vice versa ; the infinite variety of tastes 
evinced by dress ; the never-ending changes of style 
and fashion ; the apparent consciousness and apparent 
unconsciousness, if any, of finely apparelled beauty ; the 
envy that envies finery, and the finery that is never 
enough fine. 

These and many more topics from the same tomes 
engaged the Judge’s mind in the decade of his circuit, 
and greatly served to lighten the yoke of his bondage 
and make him feel that he was not un included in the 
units of the e pluribus unurn which encircles the brow 
of the American eagle. 


ANONYMOUS LETTERS. 


45 


VIII. 

ANONYMOUS LETTERS. 

Of anonymous communications the supply received by 
the court is meagre compared with that showered on the 
officers who serve its precepts. The literary gentlemen, 
however, and ladies occasionally who handle their pens, 
but hide their names, do not wholly neglect the Judge, 
and as he usually has the benefit of their epistles to the 
constabulary, the author is enabled to enrich these pages 
with specimens of both classes of the ex-parte corre- 
spondence. In justice to the writers, it should be said 
that the documents are given, as nearly as practicable, 
verbatim et literatim , as originally penned, except that 
fictitious names are substituted for real ones, that private 
affairs may not be exposed to public view. 

The following were duly received as mail of the 
Judge : 

Teeeawny, Sep. 12tli, 1872. 

Me. Wiglittle — judge Wiglittle I mean for I like the sound of it. 
I was glad you was apointed the judge of our new Court and I did all 
I could to bring it about though you may not know it. I thought 
you would do better Justice than the old fashioned trial justices we 
have been having who dont know beans as you may say. That is I 
mean some of them not all perhaps. 

Now if you wont think I am medling with your business I can tell 
you of a case that will come on before you before long. It will be 
Ancel Cook who has sued Jesse Perkins. Now I am not related to 
Perkins any way but I know all about this affair and if you will be- 
lieve me Perkins dont owe Cook a red cent and if you will look into 
it when the case comes on you will find I am right. I am right glad 
and a good many others are as glad as I am that a good lawyer like 
yourself is going to set on the case and take the evidence and sperate 
the chaf from the wheat because I know Justice will be done. 

A Feiend who knows the Case. 


46 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


Powhattan, Dec. 4, 1872. 

Sir : I supose you are old and wise enough to know that you will 
be the last man to know what the people will say of your doings as 
judge, I can tell you as a true friend they will have ther eyes on you 
pretty sharp as a judge, if you twist your mind to please the temp- 
rance folks as they call themselves you will find the publick is not 
going to be on your side I am not a liquor seller or a friend of liquor 
sellers in particular but I believe in some freedom in this free coun- 
try of ours and you will find that Prohibition in all its unconstitu- 
tionally is not going to be crowded down the throats of the People 
of this state without a fight and an oposition that will tell in the 
long run. Equal Eights. 

Hon. Judge Wiglittle. My dear Sir : I regret to say that an im- 
pression prevails that the court or the police (I can readily under- 
stand the fault to be rather with officers) is not quite so earnest as it 
should be in prosecuting the offending liquor sellers. I can confi- 
dently assure you that the utmost efforts of the court in the suppres- 
sion of the villainous traffic will be heartily sustained by the public. 

Moral Sentiment. 

Powhattan, Dec. 18, ’72. 

Mr. Wigglittel that Desison you give in the Barny Case last 
Saturday was a Shaim on Justis and you know it. Justis. 

A. Wiglittle Esq. : I believe you had some little reputation as a 
lawyer before you got the judgship but people was mistakend or else 
the office has turned your head, the Judgment you just given 
against Lamson Downs wont hold water with the Blackstone of a 
common Blacksmith Shop and you cant cover it up with Hog latin 
either. You 11 find it out when the Case comes on in the High Court 
and dont you forgit it and I am not a profit or the son of a proffit 
eather. Yours truly Common Sense. 

Sur judge wiglitle you hed a rite to Deliver a loer Sentuns in 
patrick Daylys case an all th lawers of the Yally sed it and lawers 
outt of th vally to and wen the apeall taks plase and he carrys it 
upp to that Uper Cort you wil se wat is rite. Apeall. 

Hon. Judge Wiglittle, Esq., Judge of the District, 

Bespected Sir : Your laudable efforts in behalf of law and order 
are fully appreciated by all well-disposed people of the District. The 


ANONYMOUS LETTERS. 


47 


criticisms you may hear in relation to your official conduct I hope 
and trust will not slacken your zeal. You are earning the good 
opinion of good people and that is what I hope and trust is your 
ambition and doubt not it is. 

Respectfully and Gratefully 

A Law-Abiding Citizen. 


July 8th, 1875. 

Powhatten Vally District Court ,, Holden at Trelawny,, In session Saturday 
March 18th 76,, The, Hon,, Judge Wiglittle On the Bench,, Case 
Jason Skinner , vs H, Babson, 

Action of Contract,, 

Judge W, Calmly, set there,, 

A, noble, speciman of Man,, 

With true dignity He fills the Chair, — 

A, real finished gentleman, — 

A, F, Briggs, next comes in court — 

Who, from his youth I,ve known,, 

Of some account, with some force — 

He pressed the claims of justice home,, 

Squire Holmes, quite a brilliant Chap, 

With impatience did appear, 

While his client, uneasy sat,, 

Like a culprit, in the chair,, 

Sherrif Barnes,, A Tiger, sure,, 

Who his dutys bound to do — - 
From which no bribe can allure,, 

To his oath I think Him, True, 


Your Honor wil please excuse, the liberty I have taken in imposing 
this sketch on you,, the hasty production of a feeble uncultivated 
Mind which can but admire the true dignity with which you fill your 
honorable station,, 

Truly Your humble servant 

SS„ 

Humbly dedicated to Judge Wiglittle by one who believes in him. 

A Judge there was, Wiglittle his name, 

And many the judgments he gave ; 


48 


TEN' YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE, 


He grew and grew and grew in fame, 
All liked him but the knave. 


And when he takes his upward flight 
To be there judged by One, 

He sure will know he has been right 
In seeing justice done. 

Trelawny, June 10th, 1879. 


I. P. L. 


Sprigton, Jan’y 14, ’78. 

Judge Wiglittle, Dr. Sib, Your judgments in the cases growing 
out of the Muddy Brook affair have given unfeigned satisfaction to 
all right-minded people. A few more such stalwart blows, as occa- 
sion requires, against the lawlessness of our town will have the most 
salutary effect. The whole community already feels greatly strength- 
ened in its sense of security. 

Appreciatively Yours, 

Law and Oeder. 

Sprigton, Jan. 16th. 

Me. Aron Wiglittle Esq : If you Hater yourself you have heard the 
last of them muddy Brook cases your mightly mistaken. Because the 
partys saw fitt to pay the hevy fines probbly you think the sentence 
were right but we are remembring it all the same and are on your 
track you better bet. Many Citizens. 

Haddleburg, Nov. 20, 1879. 

Judge A W so-called : You just keap on in the way you are 
going and see how long before you bring up against a putty big 
stump, ther want as mutch justice in the way you decide the widdow 
Murphys case as in the end of my little nngar. We dont Expect you 
to see strate in crimnal cases because your sowerd aginst evry- 
body who dont walk a Be line night and day but why you cant do 
the fare thing betwean man and man or betwean a man and a widdow 
is mour than I can See. give us a judge that is a judge is whats the 
matter with the Majoraty. 

Trelawny, Oct. 15th, ’79. 

To Arron Wiglittle, Siree ! If you can imagine all sensible and 
fair-minded people making up faces of disgust at you then you will 
know what you pass for as a judge in this comunity. You may not 


ANONYMOUS LETTEKS. 


49 


here it talked and think it ain’t talked but you’ll find out your mis- 
take by and by, it is a long road that dont have no turn. Election 
day is coming round soon and the voters are the chapps that tell the 
story and not your arristocrats and temperence appostles who drink 
as much rum as the rest of us, they say you take your privit grogg — 
how is that. Balott Box. 


“ Truth crushed to earth shall rise again ; 

The eternal years of God are her’s, 

But error wounded writhes in pain 
And dies among his worshippers.” 

This is w r hat the inspired poet wrote long, long ago and never did 
he sing in a higher and truer strain. I am aware that all minds 
cannot see the same thing alike, but when your work is done over in 
the higher court I think you will perceive that the truth which you 
crushed to the earth in the Bigby case has arisen again. At the same 
time I would not be understood as accusing you of intentional injus- 
tice. I think you aim to do right and generally do but you some- 
times falter, “ to err is human.” Patience. 

To Judge Wiglittle, Powhattan, Dec. 12, ’79. 


Sprigton, Feb. 6, 1880. 

Judge Wiglittle, Dear Sir, Some of the parties that will be 
brought before you to-morrow from this rum ridden town are old 
offenders and bad ones at that as the court record shows. It is hoped 
they will not be let off with a fine (which we hear they have money 
to pay) but will be put where they will not soon be at large again. 
This is what the community desire to see done and will thank the 
Judge for doing it. The Voice oe Many. 

poehatton Center, aperril 10, 1880. 
yur Honer and Proetecter of our publics Pease, i desir to Caul 
down blesings on yur Hed for the Justis you done Yesterdy, and 
mour then i say it to you. the lord in Heven wile reword you for 
haveing such regards for one poor Comuitty, and for all of us hear, 
thogh them you sentensd may no feal it so, and if you do Justis 
allwys as you done it yesterdy i can trully say you keap the goldn 
Rule, you know what I meen wich the lord He sayd it. do unto 
Others as yee woud hav Others do unto you. 

A MOTHER WITH 7 CHILDREN. 


50 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


To the Judge of the police court. 

Sir, A hint from you to sheriff B will be worth more than a dozen 
letters I might write. I find that writing to him is a waste of ink, 
still if he knew who it was that has been writing to him he might 
take more notice of it. Now if he wants to make a regular haul, 
please let him get a search warrant and go to Tom Molloy’s on 
Booker st. in this town. He had ought to summon Michael Byan, 
Peter Slattery, and John Strout (a Yankee) as I have seen them go in 
there and come out badly set up. I dont give my name here for 
good reasons as you can understand but you can depend on me as 

Temperance. 

Haddleburg, May 21, 1880. 

Sprigton, Feb. the 3th, 1881. 

Your Honer, I think you done wrong to send my husband to Jale 
as you done but I know to err is humane, he would not got in the 
trubble if he had not been in drink a little and when he is not in 
licker he is a good sober man as you ever Found, all my nabors will 
tell you this both ladys and gentlemen, I sit down now to -write and 
ask you to get up a partition to parden him out as lawyer jackson 
said that is the true way to do it, please send your partition soon 
without fale to Mrs. .* 


The following are selections of missiles addressed to 
police officers. 

POWHATTAN, Oct. 5, 1872. 

To sheriff Patton, If you did but know it there is much com- 
plaint against you for not prosecuting the liquor sellers more. I 
hear it said that it is because you cant get the evidence but how can 
this be when they are selling right along ? If I was at liberty I could 
give you the names of at least fifty who are buying the stuff every 
day but this is not my business, it is yours. If I know so many when 
it is not in my way to find out why cant you find evidence when that 
is your business ? This is what the people are asking and will ask. 

Total Abstinence. 

Mr. Henry Smith a constable of this town of Haddleburg. 

If you will go round the back side of Jim Nulty’s saloon and tako 
a peep through the window you can see enough going on any time 


* Not anonymous. 


ANONYMOUS LETTERS. 


51 


between 9 and 10 o’clock nights, I have tried it and been astonished 
to see some who are there drinking. I- am not an officer and dont 
propose to meddle with what is not my business but I give you this 
little information for your benefit and for the sake of the good cause. 
I would be an evidence myself but think I can do more by putting 
the police on the right track in this quiet way. A Friend. 


Shekef Paton : i here you call yourself smart on Hades and others 
say you be to, if you cum bak sum nite and finde yr barn bum 
down and hous two i tink youl finde you went won Hade two menny. 
i giv you this to chow on Nite take. 

Pohaton, dec. 3, 1874. 

The crak you got laste night hurted sum I rekon but the next on 
will peale you bett, we are on youre trak ole Boy and you beter mak 
yure Will if you haint. I referr you to judg Wigspitle to mak it out. 

Blood. 


Tkelorny Jully, 1878. 

Sirr : The Complane you made ganst Tom Kane was For Mallis 
and nauthin ells The Jugge had to let Him off for ther want no 
Evedince and He sed it This maks you lible for Mallishus Pros- 
cushan akording to law We shud go for you under this Hed but 
You ant wuth a dam sent and the lawyers say its no use to soo a 
begur and ketch a Lows and I gess We shud ketch lise enuf if We 
cautt you but if we dont ketch you We wil bring you downe at long 
Bainge and dont you Forgett it Kevollver. 

Trelonny in Marsh in 1880. 

mr Sirr. Yoa maye gitt the ide yer Aquanttans withe guje Wigletal 
wil saiv yoa fram grate Bepproshe, nowe it Wont doe no sush ting, 
hee as nott bigge enow forr wich i noe nowe. hee putte outt warintts 
by duzzen. and youa be ef hee doe i cum Upp with yoa sum, and hee 
sum ef hee trie saiv yoa. i Blaggard him mush and yoa sum i noe. 
i Keepe caine and sum odder ting yoa heere mee yoa see. 

BOXXER. 

Hid yoa evar heere off bludd and Thundor as yoa wil yoa bethar 
bleeve yoa bett. axx and skovell off poiiatten. 


52 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


IX. 


THE DOCKET OF THE DECADE. 


The act establishing the Powhatan Valley Police 
Court took effect August 1st, 1872. The court observed 
the tenth anniversary of its birthday in such contempla- 
tion of the past as is implied by the subjoined table, 
which is a bird’s-eye view of the doings of the court, as 
gathered mainly from the docket of the decade. 


Total number complaints received 2816 

1st year, ending August 1, ’73. 422 

2d “ “ “ 74 416 

3d “ “ “ ’75 319 

4tb “ “ “ ’76 238 

5tli “ “ “ ’77 244 

6th “ “ “ ’78 209 

7th “ “ " ’79 189 

8th “ “ “ ’80 244 

9th “ “ “ ’81 227 

10th “ “ “ ’82 308 

Complaints declined (by estimation based on data) 650 

Defendants between 7 and 17 years old 232 

{ Powhatan 1286 

s P ri « ton 503 

Haddleburg 537 

Trelawney 490 


Pleas of guilty 1333 

“ “ not guilty 1037 

“ “ nolo contendere 35 

Persons bound over 62 

“ convicted and sentenced 1990 

“ found not guilty 184 

Complaints placed on file 170 

Appeals 114 

Committed for non-payment of fine 322 

“ in default of bail 55 


THE DOCKET OF THE DECADE. 


53 


Committed to House of Correction on sentence 91 

“ Reform School 7 

u " Industrial School for Girls 1 

“ “ Reformatory Prison for Women 6 

Delivered to Board of State Charities 2 

Drunkenness, first offence 758 

“ second “ 42 

Common drunkards 35 

Warrants to search for intoxicating liquor 230 

“ “ stolen goods 14 

** “ gaming implements 5 

‘ Seizures of intoxicating liquor 74 

Warrants returned without seizure 156 

Lots of liquor forfeited 62 

“ “ returned 11 

“ “ stolen from officer 1 

Prosecutions under liquor law 202 

Assault, simple 435 

“ with dangerous weapon 8 

Assault on officer 4 

“ with intent to kill 2 

“ indecent 2 

“ with intent to rape 4 

Mayhem 1 

Threatening 2 

Larceny, simple 225 

“ in building 10 

Obtaining money under false pretence 12 

Receiving stolen goods 3 

Robbery 1 

Forgery 2 

Embezzlement 3 

Selling hired property 1 

“ mortgaged property 4 

Concealing “ “ 3 

Breaking and entering 31 

Malicious mischief 25 

Breaking glass 25 

Trespass 27 

Burning grass 2 

Taking team ( * 1 free ride ”) 0 

Extortion ^ 


54 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


Disturbance of tbe peace 312 

Disturbing meeting 

Discharging firearms 3 

Carrying dangerous weapon 1 

Refusing aid 1 

Adultery 9 

Fornication 14 

Lewdness 6 

Indecent exposure 1 

Abduction „ 1 

Railer and brawler 9 

Neglect of family 7 

Vagrancy (beggars, tramps, etc.) 47 

Stubborn child 6 

Violation of Sunday law 54 

Common nuisance (ill-fame) 8 

Profane swearing 1 

Evading car fare 73 

Cruelty to animals 25 

Gaming 4 

Fishing, unlawful 2 

Unlawful employment of help 1 

Neglect to send to school 1 

Letting tenement for nuisance 1 

Driving to the right in passing I 1 

Suffering dog to be at large 1 

Peddling without license 42 

Keeping dog without license 40 

Keeping billiard-table without license 3 

Setting up show without license 2 

Cock-fighting 2 

Killing partridge out of season 1 

“ quail “ “ “ 2 

Violation of By-laws 14 

Contempt 6 

Civil actions entered 658 

“ “ disposed of 619 

Trials by jury (1873 and 1874) 23 

Demands for trial by jury 54 

i( “ “ “ “ waived 31 

Appeals 51 

Executions issued 317 


THE DOCKET OF THE DECADE. 


55 


{ from Powhatan 10 

“ Haddleburg 1 

“ Sprigton 2 

“ Trelawney 5 

f from Powhatan 4 

Insane persons committed to J «« Haddleburg 4 

Hospital since May, 1879. j “ Sprigton none 

\ “ Trelawney 3 

{ deaths at Powhatan 15 

“ Haddleburg.... 3 

“ Sprigton.-. 1 

“ Trelawney none 

Arrests and examination under poor debtor law 14 

Different officers serving precepts issued by Court 68 

Different attorneys appearing in cases before Court 45 


Amount received in fines, fees, forfeitures, and costs. .$31,853.56 


Paid County Treasurer in fines, fees, and costs 12,631.23 

“ ** “ fees uncalled for 407.15 

“ Towns under By-Laws 51.50 

“ informants under statute 592.50 

“ special justices 604.50 

“ T. S. F. T. P. O. C. T. A 15.00 

“ officers in fees, etc 15,497.68 

“ witnesses 2,054.00 


The disparity between the number of prosecutions in- 
stituted and the number of cases disposed of will be 
understood if it be remembered that arrests are not always 
made on warrants issued. Parties defendant sometimes 
abscond, and occasionally the sober second thought or an 
alteration of circumstances suggests that the warrant 
better not be served. 

The variation in the number of criminal cases from 
year to year is believed to be due measurably to two prin- 
cipal causes — the varying activity of officers and “ the 
times. ” However the fact may seem opposed to reason, 
it appears to hold quite invariably true the world over 
that crime of the misdemeanor class, if not the graver 
offences, more abounds in prosperous times. It will be 


56 


TEH YEAES A POLICE COUET JUDGE. 


seen that there "were most cases in the years 1872-74, 
when the country was rollicking in the tlushness of in- 
flation and everybody felt pretty well off. As the panic 
approached the cases grew less, till in the great depression 
of 1878-79 they fell from 838 in 1873-74 to 398, and then 
with the revival of business swelled to 535 in 1881-82 ; 
by which it would seem that crime flourishes most in the 
rank soil of material prosperity. The disparity is trace- 
able to some extent to the greater or less efficiency of 
police officers, but is believed to be referable mainly to 
“ the times.” 

Drunkenness more prevailed in the flush times of 
1873-74, although under the reign of prohibition. The 
largest number of u drunks” was in the year ending 
October 1st, *1874. It then reached 128, but fell to 41 
in the very panicky year ending October 1st, 1879, 
though the license law of 1875 was in force, and two 
towns of the district granted license. The fact that the 
number of cases in the two first years of the decade is 
found largely in excess of that of any two subsequent years 
of “ good times,” is explainable from the circumstance 
that one and sometimes two State constables were then 
resident of the district and active as prosecutors, and 
from the further circumstance that the magistracy of 
the court was then new and looked, it may be supposed, 
less discriminatingly into the evidence necessary to sup- 
port a complaint before receiving it, and was less versed 
in the charitable art of discouraging merely frivolous 
complaints , of which the number is surprisingly large 
even unto this day. 

By the census of 1870 the population of the district 
was 14,435, and 14,313 by the census of 1880. A 
fair average of the population being 14,374, the com- 
plaints were as about one to every five inhabitants. 


OKE OF THE JUDGE’S CRIMINAL DECISIONS. 5? 


X. 

ONE OF THE JUDGE’S CRIMINAL DECISIONS. 

Comth. vs. Piggins. 

The defendant is charged with being drunk by the 
voluntary use of intoxicating liquor. The day of the 
alleged offence was the day of town-meeting in the town 
of his residence, and the place, as it is said, the town- 
hall, where the meeting was held. 

It appears that there was a large attendance upon the 
meeting of the townspeople, including many ladies, who 
were present in earnest force to secure, if they might, a 
vote adverse to the licensing of liquor-selling ; that the 
defendant was present for two or more hours, and moved 
more or less about the hall, and held discourse with 
divers persons, women as well as men ; that he voted a 
vote in favor of license, and was outspoken in advocacy 
of the policy of granting license ; and that there were 
several officers at hand who saw defendant, but did not 
arrest him nor attempt so to do. So far, there is no 
controversy. 

On the part of the government eight witnesses are 
called in support of the charge in the complaint, all of 
whom swear that they saw the defendant several times 
while he was in the hall, and were near to him, and three 
of the number say that they talked with him, or at least 
exchanged words with him. Their testimony is singu- 
larly concurrent touching his condition. It tends to 
show that he was boisterous, impudent, and incoherent in 
his speech ; that he moved with an unsteady gait, stag- 


58 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


gered ; that lie was flushed and unnaturally red in the 
face ; that his breath smelled of liquor and smelled 
strong ; that he was, in a word, drunk. All the wit- 
nesses say that they are acquainted with defendant, have 
seen him often in recent time past, and are familiar with 
his appearance when not under the influence of drink, 
and that they are the more certain of his intoxication at 
the town-meeting by reason of their familiarity with his 
ordinary walk and conversation. These witnesses, I 
find, are all respectable, reputable, and prominent citizens 
of their town. One is a deputy-sheriff of the county, 
widely known as a reliable man ; another is an old 
citizen who has held many positions of trust, known in 
the community as deacon for many years of his church, 
and a gentleman of acknowledged piety ; a third is an 
officer of the town, and the rest are of admitted intelli- 
gence and character. None of them have any personal 
quarrel with defendant, so they say, and they unite in 
declaring themselves unconscious of anything that should 
bias their testimony. 

Clearly enough, this makes out a jprima facie case for 
the government. To meet it twelve witnesses are called 
by the defendant, not voluntary witnesses, but duly sum- 
moned by process. They are equally concurrent with 
the witnesses for the prosecution, but concur in testify- 
ing to a state of facts very opposite concerning defend- 
ant’s condition. They swear that they were present at 
the meeting and saw him off and on throughout the time 
covered by the government testimony. They deliber- 
ately say, some of them, that they talked with him, and 
all of them that they saw and heard him talking with 
others ; that they saw him walking about and saw him 
vote ; that his carriage was steady, his look natural, and 
his speech decorous and not exceptionally loud ; that his 


ONE OE THE JUDGE’S CRIMINAL DECISIONS. 


59 


breath was not alcoholic to their sense, though they were 
near enough to observe it if it had been, and were 
themselves in condition to observe it ; that they noticed 
nothing unusual in defendant’s appearance, and that, in 
their opinion, he was sober. All these witnesses are 
respectable and reputable, and most of them prominent 
citizens of the town. Two of them are selectmen, one 
of the two chairman of the board ; another is a Senator 
of the State ; a third is chairman of the School Com- 
mittee ; a fourth is an assessor of the town, and the rest 
are admittedly of good standing in the neighborhood. 
All of them, too, are acquainted with defendant, and 
have been accustomed to see him on the street, at town- 
meeting, and elsewhere, and they also add that they are 
not conscious of any bias. 

Such is the evidence. It is a criminal case, and the 
rule puts upon the government the burden of proof. 
The government must prove the guilt of the defendant 
beyond a reasonable doubt. Failing to do so, he is to be 
discharged. It is an aphorism of law that witnesses are 
to be weighed, not counted, and I am very apt to be in- 
fluenced by this piece of ancient wisdom. Sometimes 
and not seldom there is in the witness, either patent or 
latent, such bias, prejudice, ignorance, weakness, swift- 
ness, or other insensibility to the obligations of an oath, 
that his testimony must needs be taken with much allow- 
ance or set wholly aside. A score of witnesses of this 
class put into the scale may be thrown aloft by the word 
of one good man dropped into the other plate. But here 
the witnesses are neither swift nor unintelligent. Nor 
are they, as I discover, actuated by any corrupt or un- 
worthy motive. It is, indeed, impossible not to infer 
from the evidence in general that there was at the place 
of the alleged offence an excited town-meeting ; that the 


60 


TEtf YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


exciting issue with the people there assembled was 
whether the vote should declare for license or prohibi- 
tion in the town, and that out of the contest there might 
have arisen feeling and even prejudice to warp the minds 
of the persons who have here borne witness and were there 
active participants. But while the witnesses for the 
government appear to have been quite unanimously of 
the non-license party, the witnesses for the defence ap- 
pear to have been of both parties, one of the latter at 
least being a conspicuous friend of the temperance cause, 
if temperance, forsooth, as a principle, is to be deemed 
identical with the policy of anti-license. 

Furthermore, the witnesses seem to have an intelligent 
.understanding of what constitutes drunkenness, as defined 
by the authorities, whether legal or lexical. To be im- 
moderately under the influence of strong drink ; to be 
thereby noticeably demented and so physically incapac- 
itated as to affect in a marked degree one’s look, walk, 
and deportment — this it is to be drunk, and such appears 
to be the understanding by the witnesses of what the 
word means. That the defendant, if he was drunk, was 
drunk by the voluntary use of intoxicating liquor, is not 
in dispute. Was he so drunk ? The evidence, as I see it 
and have endeavored to state it, raises in my mind not 
only a reasonable doubt, but involves me in absolute 
doubt and darkness. The answer to the question 
wdietlier Jeremiah Piggins was inebriated on the day of 
the late town-meeting in Sprigton, is enshrouded in im- 
penetrable mystery. For aught I know, he might have 
so been. For aught 1 know, he had on that interesting 
occasion tasted not, touched not, handled not. If I 
were to draw an inference from what appeared to be Mr. 
Piggin’s tendency to beer the day he was arraigned on 
this complaint, I should think it not impossible that he 


ONE OF THE JUDGE’S CIVIL DECISIONS. 


Cl 


might have been too far in his cnps for a discreet exer- 
cise of the right of suffrage on the day of the town- 
meeting. But it is not for me to go outside of the evi- 
dence in the case. I am to know only what I may, en- 
lightened by the evidence material to the issue. Sitting 
in snch light, the light of the mass of testimony here 
presented, I know not whether the witnesses for the 
government falsify or speak truth. I know not whether 
the witnesses for the defence are perjurious or veracious. 
I know not whether the defendant was intoxicated or 
sober. I know nothing about it, and, knowing nothing 
about it, the defendant is discharged and the witnesses 
are dismissed from further attendance on the case. 


XI. 

ONE OF THE JUDGE’S CIVIL DECISIONS. 

Packard vs. Dunlap. 

The action is brought to recover three dollars and a 
half for work done by the plaintiff on and about certain 
wearing apparel belonging to the defendant. The 
amount involved by comparison with suits in general is 
small. It was said by one of the counsel that this cir- 
cumstance is immaterial, and it is true. Courts have 
sometimes seen fit to throw a case out of court because 
the amount involved was a trifling sum. It is believed 
that there is no law in this country and never was 
authorizing a court thus summarily to dispose of disputes 


62 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


between parties. The right to sue is beyond question, 
and the right to be heard in the suit is equally unques- 
tionable. Nor can it make any difference under our 
frame of government whether the petty suit, so called, is 
before the highest or lowest tribunal, provided it be 
before either in due form of law. A court of justice, 
of whatever jurisdiction or by whatever name called, is 
for the same purpose, and is to be governed by the same 
law of fairness — that is, justice between man and man ; 
and the court that throws out a case, except for some 
absolute and incurable informality, tramples upon the 
rights of the citizen whose court it is. 

I say this much just here as correcting, so far as I 
may, the popular impression that a court, the higher 
court, if not the lower, has a right to throw a case out 
and treat with disdain an humble suitor. Courts may 
do this thing in the exercise of a discretion, but the dis- 
cretion so exercised is a gross assumption of authority. 
The tribunal that does it despotically sets at defiance the 
constitution of the State which provides that “ every 
subject of the Commonwealth ought to find a certain 
remedy, by having recourse to the laws, for all injuries 
and wrongs which he may receive in his person, property, 
or character. ” 1 have therefore considered it my duty 

to sit with as much patience in this case and weigh it 
with as strict reference to the law and the evidence as 1 
would if, instead of its involving only three dollars and 
a half, it involved three thousand dollars and a half. 

A few material facts in the case are not in contro- 
versy. These are that the plaintiff performed certain 
work on the defendant’s coat, pants, and vest ; that the 
work was satisfactory in kind ; that the price charged 
has in no part been paid in money ; that the defendant 
has not taken the clothes away from the plaintiff’s tailor- 


ONE OF THE JUDGE’S CIVIL DECISIONS. 


63 


shop, and that they are still in the plaintiff’s possession. 
That the price charged was reasonable I take to be 
true. The plaintiff so testifies, and no evidence, at least 
no expert evidence, is adduced to the contrary. Con- 
tradictory evidence there is as to an agreed price, but this 
affected the coat only, or at most the coat and vest only. 
The cleansing of a pair of pants was afterward embraced 
in the job, and whether by the defendant’s request or 
direction or not, it appears that he ratified the act of the 
plaintiff in the work. There is no explicit evidence of 
the value of this particular work done on the pants, 
save as there is ground for strong inference that the 
trousers were very considerably soiled ; but upon the 
plaintiff’s sworn statement that the entire price for the 
entire job was reasonable, and in the absence of expert 
testimony to negative it, I feel bound to conclude that 
by reason of the plaintiff’s labor the defendant became 
indebted to him in the sum of three dollars and a half. 

Has Packard been paid f 

The defendant answers that he made a special agree- 
ment with the plaintiff to take the garments as his com- 
pensation in full, and that the plaintiff, in pursuance of 
such agreement, did take the garments, and the same did 
sell. The evidence in support of this alleged agreement 
is derived from a certain wrangle which took place 
between the parties when Dunlap called at Packard’s 
shop to get his apparel. The wrangle may be briefly 
summarized as follows : Dunlap thought Packard’s price 
was high, and told him so ; and Packard thought Dun- 
lap’s idea was low, and told him that. Dunlap said 
the clothes were not worth the charge of fixing them, 
and the tailor said that’s what he told him in the begin- 
ning. Dunlap says he said that Packard might sell the 
clothes and get what he could out of them, and that the 


64 


TEST YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


tailor said he’d be d— d if be didn’t. Packard says that 
be didn’t so say, but “ flew up, in tbe spirit of ’76,” and 
drove Dunlap out of bis shop with tbe yardstick. 

Obviously, tbe parties at tbis interview were somewhat 
excited, and on tbis occasion it was that tbe special agree- 
ment, if any, was made. It is, indeed, a very grave 
question whether a solemn contract could be entered 
into by two persons who were thus acting under tbe in- 
fluence and excitement of what Mr. Michael McFinn, who 
was then and there present, characterizes as a “row.” 
Tbe weight of authority undoubtedly is that such con- 
ditions are quite unfavorable to that meeting of tbe two 
minds, which is tbe indispensable requisite of a contract. 
The policy of tbe law is to discourage contracts which 
take, or appear to take, origin in the foment of passion 
and not in the cool and collected reason of the contract- 
ing parties. The law in its majesty deprecates impulse 
and impetuosity, and in general has respect only for 
what appears to have been a deliberate purpose of the 
parties in negotiation. That there was a special contract 
entered into in that tempest in the tailor-shop the 
burden, of course, is on the defendant, who relies upon 
it to show. Dunlap swears that he told Packard he 
might sell the garments and get what he could out of 
them, and that Packard said he’d be d — d if he 
wouldn’t. Packard, while swearing that Dunlap did 
substantially so say, swears that he himself did not so 
swear. It thus appears that there was an offer on the 
part of Dunlap, but it does not appear by the necessary 
preponderance of evidence that there was an acceptance 
by Packard. 

Allowing, now, that the parties were in a legal frame 
of mind to contract, the burden which is upon Dunlap is 
hardly sustained. He lacks corroboration. I hold the 


OHE OF THE JUDGE’S CIVIL DECISIONS. 65 

parties to be of equal standing in court, both respectable 
citizens entitled to credit, but to give tlie testimony of 
Dunlap a preponderating force, he should be in some 
degree corroborated. He is not. Upon the very mate* 
rial point whether the plaintiff assented to the defend- 
ant’s proposition to sell the garments and get as much as 
he could out of them, Mr. Michael McFinn is silent, or 
in effect silent. In answer to the inquiry whether Pack- 
ard did so assent, Michael makes the unsatisfactory 
remark, “ They had their little row.” Mr. McFinn, 
though a tailor, is a disinterested witness. He was in 
the employ of the plaintiff at the time, but is not now 
nor has been for some time. He leans neither to the 
one side nor .the other, but implicates both parties in “ a 
little row.” I cannot, therefore, find that the special 
agreement set up by the defendant is proven. 

It is, to be sure, a circumstance fruitful for comment 
that the defendant took the clothes to the store of E. B. 
Laraby and there made some sort of an arrangement for 
their sale; but this I regard rather as carrying “ the 
spirit of ’76” too far on his part, than an act done in pur- 
suance of a contract between him and the defendant. 
For this act he has undoubtedly laid himself liable to 
Mr. Dunlap in damages for an unwarranted transporta- 
tion of the garments, and allowing them to hang .for a 
season to be shop-worn in the store of Laraby, instead 
of allowing them to hang peacefully till called for in his 
own shop. But I cannot treat the act, presumably un- 
lawful as it assuredly is, as a circumstance of sufficient 
weight to settle in the defendant’s favor the confused 
and conflicting evidence touching the alleged special 
agreement. 

1 therefore find the plaintiff entitled to recover three 
dollars and a half, with interest, from the 28th day of 


06 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


July, the date of the writ, amounting to three cents and 
six mills. Judgment for plaintiff for $3.53.6. 


XII. 

A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 

February 23d. Returning this morning from the 
Hub of the Universe, whither 1 went yesterday, ob- 
servant of Washington’s birthday, I found Officer A 
at the court-room with a prisoner to be tried for disturb- 
ance. Observed that the officer wore a more disheart- 
ened look than his prisoner. The peace-breaker’s case 
disposed of, immediately the cause of the policeman’s de- 
jection appeared. Rather it was some minutes before 
he could speak of it, so choked was his utterance. By a 
stroke of resolution the man suppressed his great emo- 
tion, and told what was weighing him down. 

His son and only child, a young man of twenty years, 
who had been assisting more or less in a ticket-office, was 
accused of stealing a considerable sum of money. The 
ticket-officer had the day before threatened the father 
with a prosecution, unless the sum alleged to be stolen 
was paid. This the father was ready to pay if he could 
believe his boy guilty. The boy stoutly denied the 
guilt, and the circumstances altogether, as narrated to 
me by the father (partial of course), led me to think that 
the ticket-officer had run behindhand by his own mis- 
management, and hoped to get out of his trouble by ac- 
cusing the boy he had solicited to help him in his busi- 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


67 


uess. Comforted Officer A as I could, and assured liim that 
no complaint would be received against his son except 
for the most controlling reasons. Thereupon he said. 
“ Now I’ll go down to the house and see if I can get a 
little sleep ; I haven’t slept for two nights, and I’m 
little better than sick.” He left me with the impres- 
sion that a great load was off his mind when he had told 
me his story. As an old officer, w T ho has, doubtless, had 
more cases before the court than any other three officers 
together, the thought of his own son being arraigned 
before the familiar tribunal was without doubt quite 
overwhelming. This was the first time in my long polit- 
ical acquaintance with him that I ever saw this hardy, 
spunky, rongh-and-tumble arrester and prosecutor of 
offenders moved to tears. 

February 24 th. No cases and few callers. At- 
tended to matters of record. In the evening w^as 
called upon by a nineteen -year-old girl (Irish), of a 
pleasant face and uncommonly bright, whose tale was of 
that sorrowful sort that afflicts too many hearts and 
shadows too many homes. The seducer, who had prom- 
ised the girl marriage, had fled to parts unknown, and left 
her in hopeless disgrace. She had worked till of late in 
a mill of this district. Her father lives in a neighboring 
State, and is a person of considerable property, but was 
an irascible man, to whom the mother, who knows her 
daughter’s shame, does not dare to break the bitter story. 
Meanwhile, unknown to her father, the mother is pay- 
ing her daughter’s board where he thinks she is still earn- 
ing that and more. 

Received the girl’s complaint, and issued a warrant for 
the arrest of the seducer, “ if lie may be found within 
this precinct.” 

February 25 th. Tried a man to*day for breaking 


G8 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


glass — bar-room glass, a great pane. Acquitted him, 
not because not believed guilty, but because the 
evidence failed to prove him so. The lying in the case 
was awful. The bar-keeper, who knew all about it, was a 
reluctant witness, and falsified and shuffled till he sweat 
drops of confusion and actually reeled with the drunk- 
enness of his inveracity. ... Two young men, besides 
the defendant, deliberately swore to absolute ignorance 
of what it was apparent from a variety of circumstances 
they had definite knowledge of. 

The glass was broken by one of these three (probably 
the defendant) in a fit of drunken rage, because the bar- 
keeper had refused them more liquor at twelve o’clock Sat- 
urday night wfflen he would close shop. The noise of the 
glass-breaking was heard in all the neighborhood, and 
the proprietor of the place, the bar-keeper, the three 
young men, and one or two others were the only persons 
at the scene of action. Yet the proprietor, though he 
heard the noise, saw not the act ; the bar-keeper, though 
he saw the act and the actors, could not say who did it, 
and the young men, though they were right upon the 
spot, protested they heard no noise whatever, and did 
not know any glass was broken. One of these same 
young men the morning after the breaking had paid the 
proprietor the price of the glass, and so admitted. He 
did not know what he did it for, and the proprietor did 
not. All which riddle is guessed thus : A bar-room 
rumpus scandalizing the neighborhood ; proprietor, mad 
at first, on second thought did not want to offend his 
patrons ; bar-keeper does not want to offend his em- 
ployer ; patrons had dared both to tell the truth, and 
both dared not tell it. To such shifts does rum drive 
its votaries. 

Received complaints against a couple of peace-break- 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. G9- 

ers, and heard the rambling story of an old woman who 
thought she had “ a case,” but proved to have only a. 
“ burden ’pon her mind,” and rather small one at that. 

February 2 6tA. Puttered to-day over civil matters- 
without a streak of criminal agitation, save as a 
voluble French girl failed to satisfy me that her boss in 
the mill was probably guilty of a rude assault upon her. 

February 28 th. The morning hour found a man 
guilty of drunkenness and, as a sequence, guilty of 
cruelty to a dumb beast — unmercifully over-driving a 
noble horse. Mulcted for the first offence $1 without 
costs, the limit of the law in such case ; and for the 
second $10 and costs, which under the law might have 
been $250 with costs. But for the over-drinking there 
had been no over- driving. Which was the greater of- 
fence — to be drunk so as to over-drive, or to over-drive 
because drunk ? Here’s a problem for legislators. 

Toiled rest of day in a replevin suit. Nor yet 
finished. The lawyers spun it out with remarkable de- 
votion. Seems to me now and then my patience is 
all but sublime. Doubtless, the remembered weakness 
of self in their place enables me to rise to such heights. 
Is it for this cause the bench is deemed so elevating by 
comparison with the bar ? Or is it only the higher 
court bench that elevates ? Methinks, sometimes, that 
the police-court judge (always spelt with a little j), who 
acts well his part, is the noblest judicial work of the Most 
High. It is permitted me to say this in mine journal, 
but what rank presumption if uttered to the world ! 
Still, what exalted judge scuffles with the frailties and 
roughnesses of society, year in and year out, in the 
interests of order, peace, and justice, as does the di- 
minutive judge who sits in his murky court and wears 
a murky ermine. Another thought comes over me. 


70 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


Was ever a police judge promoted ? An instance or 
two are of record. But how the bar did scowl upon the 
fortunates (?) when their j’s were enlarged to J’s ! 

March 1st. A case of drunkenness — the second 
against the same young man within five and twenty 
days. He pleads guilty, and says he did “not intend 
to take too much. ’ ’ 

March 2d. A caseless day. Wliat better condi- 
tion of a court than to be without business ? Such 
dearth for the hour shows community in health. The 
police-court docket is the barometer of the state of 
society. Annotated, it would be a prize essay on social 
science. How to annotate it — that is the question. 
This should be the study of the moralist. The substra- 
tum of the social problem lies in the plane of the police 
courts. Here is the lower round of the social ladder. 
Here social science should begin, here statesmanship 
begin, here begin the ministry of all true reform. For 
this reason ought not the best heads to be on the police 
bench, the best executives on the constable list ? For 
the rectification of the ills of society would it not seem 
that the order of the appointment of officials should be 
reversed ? Are not the offices called the least to be 
deemed the greatest in importance, and therefore to be 
filled by the highest talent ? In a word, does not the 
public good require that the heads of States and towns — 
judges of supreme and police courts and so on — change 
places, to the end that the superior intellect and culture 
be at the base of the social order rather than at the top ? 
Would not the so-called higher places in a great measure 
take care of themselves, if the so-called lower places 
were officered with a care and cost proportionate to their 
real consequence ? Come to think of it, is not govern- 
ment organized wrong end foremost ? 


A SECTION" OE THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


71 


March 3d. Three peace-distiirbers paid fines — an 
elderly Irishman, his daughter, and son-in-law by mar- 
riage with another daughter. Their offence was an up- 
roarious midnight wrangle, to the great disturbance of 
the neighborhood, all of which grew out of the inebriety 
of the son-in-law, moved by his grog to war on his sister- 
in-law for keeping a clandestine groggery, which it ap- 
peared his intoxication had inspired him to denounce in 
the name of u temperance.” 

March 4th. For several years after I had bought my 
little second-hand house out of petty savings and a small 
windfall, 1 had had a craving to cement the cellar and 
make it rat-proof. Eats had disturbed me nights even 
more than rappers at the door. Year before last, by 
dint of frugality, 1 contrived to get at the cementing 
enterprise, and by overseeing the job so baffled the evil 
quadrupeds that not a mother’s son of them could break 
and enter my castle unless the entry was made by the 
cellar kitchen door left ajar or by jumping in at the 
window, if haply the window were open and the screen 
not in, a contingency not likely to happen. Probably rats 
were never so mad as were my late rats when they found 
what a job I had done. But they were not going to 
give it up, and so one day — day or night — a rat, a wharf 
rat (for wharf rats abound in the Powhatan Valley, 
, having been introduced thereinto by the canal boats 
which a generation ago plied up and down the Powhat- 
an and Woosok Canal), either at the kitchen door or by 
a window, passed into my cemented cellar. Yes, he got 
in, but he could not get out, and hide he did in a pile of 
cabbages piled up in a cellar corner, and gnawing them 
all up he was and other damage doing. I resolved to 
attack him, and accordingly this afternoon, after a long 
session of court-holding, I went home and said as much 


73 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


to Mrs. Wiglittle. She did not object, and I descended 
to the cellar with a broom. Having dissipated all other 
available hiding-places, I laid hold of the cabbages and 
lifted them one by one to a large hanging shelf of oars, 
where we keep onr pies, doughnuts, etc., when we have 
any. I saw the champings as I progressed, and knew I 
was on the trail ; and sure enough, when 1 had lifted all the 
cabbages but three, out ran the rat, a veritable whopper ! 
But he could not run out of sight, nor, as I felt confi- 
dent, beyond the maul of my broom, which 1 instantly 
seized, and then I opened fire. I was hurrying hither 
and thither and energetically striking without effectively 
hitting, when a voice, easily recognized as that of my 
wife, but of a dolorous pitch, was heard at the door 
which I had taken due precaution to fasten — “ Mr. 
Wiglittle, Mr. Wiglittle, a lady has called and would 
like a writ.” “ Writ be darned ! 55 cried 1, in tones I 
am not used to in dialogue with Mrs. W. “ Never, 5 ’ I 
added, “never will 1 make another writ till I have 
killed this rat, 55 and I kept my word. It took me, 
mayhap, fifteen minutes, but the invader at last suc- 
cumbed to the blows of a persistent broom, and lay quiv- 
ering at my feet in the agonies of dissolution. The lady 
waited till it was all over, but Mrs. Wiglittle, as I have 
reason to believe, told her that it took me longer than 
she had expected. 

March 5th. Two alleged peace-breakers found not 
guilty, albeit the officer and divers others were sanguine 
of their guilt, if but the truth were known. Here is 
another instance of the difference between knowing a 
thing and proving it. There was no doubt as to the 
guilt of an Englishman arraigned for drunkenness, for 
he said “ guilty. 5 5 He well might, for he was picked up 
last night lying near a lamp-post in the wet and rain 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


73 


with two whiskey bottles in his pockets, which the 
policeman smashed. The man, after paying his dollar 
tine, wanted a restoration of the bottles. Decided that 
the smashing was moral if not legal. 

This afternoon two lawyers argued the replevin case 
previously heard. It might be called the “ picker case,” 
as the sole thing in dispute was a shoddy picker valued 
at $80. The waves of legal oratory rolled in upon me 
two hours and fifteen minutes by the clock — the meet- 
ing-house clock — the court-house clock doesn’t go. In 
their endeavors to pick the picker each to his side of the 
case, the lawyers picked one another sufficiently. They 
also picked out of the evidence an abundance of facts to 
build each a strong castle for his own client, and then 
each picked out of the Reports such a remarkable 
amount of law for a wall of adamant round each castle, 
that it seemed for the moment that there were two 
equally well-built castles, equally fortified and equally 
containing the same identical picker over which this 
great quarrel was picked. Then the orators essayed to 
pick out the obstinate spots in the cranium of the court 
and disarm them by sundry potent appeals, and essayed 
not less to pick out the court’s soft spots and apply 
thereto the spell of a beautiful adulation. Indeed, 
Peter Piper, who picked a peck of pickled peppers, 
never picked more dexterously and pertinaciously than 
did these lawyers who picked for this particular picker. 

March 1th. An Irishman charged with robbing a 
farmer’s clothes-line of sundry shirts and a chemise or 
two found not guilty. Tracks in a fresh snow to 
and fro between the clothes-yard and a cabin in the 
woods, where defendant and another wood-chopper 
lodged, were an inculpating circumstance ; but this with 
but little else was not deemed enough. 


74 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


A peace-breaker with a very black eye pleaded guilty 
and paid a fine. He would not discover the names of 
a half dozen others in the row wherein he was engaged, 
obvious though it was that he knew his fellow-rowdies. 

March 8 th. A beastly assault by a man on a woman. 
Drunk he was, and rudely entered a house where, with 
little or no preface, he flew at a young Frenchwoman 
sitting with a baby in her arms, and dragged her to the 
floor by the feet, badly bumping the baby’s forehead and 
hurting the mother, whose back struck against the chair. 
The man of the house, together with another woman, put 
a stop to farther misrule. The assailant was not crazy. 
Simply he was drunk, and a very inoffensive person when 
sober, as was fully proven. 

March 9 th. Three young men out of a large number 
(all Irish, others partly spotted) arraigned for a great 
infraction of the public peace — a general fight at 
“ Loafers’ Corner,” as defendants naively styled the 
battle-ground, hocest , the front yard premises of “ Uncle 
Ben Hubbard, you know.” It all grew out of an over- 
taking of beer (always only beer) by the chief particejjs 
criminis. The accused, after the usual manner of 
Hibernian honor in such case, stoutly refused to “ blow 
on” other participants in this enterprise of lawlessness in 
front of Uncle Ben Hubbard’s, otherwise called “ Loaf- 
ers’ Corner.” 

March 10 th. Another assault by a man on a woman. 
Defendant a very coarse specimen from “ Wollom 
Height,” the Egypt of Sprigton. He stared with a be- 
wildered gaze when admonished that he could not smoke 
in court the very black pipe which, at one stage of legal 
proceedings, he was about to light. One puff or two 
from the pipe he accomplished ere the court’s eye rested 
upon him, and though the court is a smoker, the stench 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


75 


did nearly drive the tribunal to a resolution of reform. 
This man of the black pipe, brutalized by villainous 
grog, whose very face, to quote Sydney Smith, was a 
breach of the peace, had recklessly kicked a woman in 
the bowels. 

Upon the heels of the above came another assault by a 
male on a female— that of a Frenchman who, among 
other abuses of his better half, had vigorously pulled and 
tom his wife’s hair. This woman had before been to 
me with complaints, not without some excitement of my 
sympathy. Had advised her to forbear and forbear till 
forbearance ceased to be virtue. This time it occurred 
to me that one straw too many had been laid, if not on 
the woman’s, at least on the camel’s — that is, the court’s 
back. 

March 11th. A quail case. The statute saith that 
whoever between the first day of January and the 
fifteenth day of October killeth the fowl called quail is a 
foul fellow, and shall pay the penalty of $20. The 
evidence to-day proved a Frenchman a foul fellow of 
this sort. In the town of Haddleburg resides a fine old 
gentleman in a very fine mansion, and in the rear of the 
mansion is a very fine forest, which during the cold win- 
ter has been a favorite resort of quail. Much has the 
old gentleman delighted in this visitation upon his 
premises of quail, and much has he cultivated their good 
graces by a liberal strewing about of such provisions as 
quail have a special palate for. Much too has this bene- 
factor of the quail been annoyed by Frenchmen prowling 
about his forest with fowling-pieces. Sundry times he 
lias warned them off his land, and particularly has he 
heretofore forewarned the defendant of to-day. Never- 
theless, did he the day before yesterday boldly invade 
the quail forest and five quail shoot before the very eyes 


76 


TEIT YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


of the fine old gentleman himself. This truly was foul 
enough, and a complainant was dispatched to the Pow- 
hatan Court and a warrant speedily issued, and with it 
issued forth Officer A to capture this quail-killer. Till 
late into the night he searched for him in the town of 
Haddleburg, but found him not. People said, “ The 
Frenchman has flown.” Officer A said, “ He’s hid in 
Haddleburg, and I’ll have him to-morrow.” So early 
yesterday morning Officer A was on the warpath, and 
early yesterday morning he espied the quail-killer flying 
out of Haddleburg in a sleigh, with a boon companion 
also of the polite country. The man with the warrant 
gave quick and hot chase to the man who was wanted at 
the Powhatan Court. It was a chase of a dozen miles 
out of Haddleburg into Trelawney and out of Trelawney, 
almost into the land which John Randolph, of Roanoke, 
once most shamefully characterized. It was a question 
of horse-flesh in the first place and of man -flesh in the 
second. It sufficeth to say that the quail-slayer slept in 
the lock-up last night, and this morning bewailed in court 
the sin he committed against the birds that may not fall 
to the ground without the statute’s notice. 

Out of the French family broil of yesterday grew 
evidence that impaled a French liquor-seller to-day. 
The trafficker had been swimmingly infringing the law 
along with his other business of baker-cart driving. 

March 12 th. A civil day, all about writs, entries, 
defaults, non-suits, pleadings, rulings, motions, judg- 
ments, executions, res adjudicata et rigmarolata . 
Altogether remindful of the wit of Hudibras : 

“ So lawyers, lest the bear defendant 
And plaintiff dog should make an end on’t, 

Do stave and tail with writs of error, 

Beverse of judgment and demurrer, 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 77 

To let them breathe awhile, and then 
Cry whoop ! and set them on again.” 

March 14 th. A lawyer of the State of Rhode Island 
and the Providence Plantations appeared upon the scene 
and moved for time to dig up a defence of two defend- 
ants, presumed to he innocent, hut prohahly guilty. 
Granted. Once I went down to the land of Canon icus 
and asked a like liberty. Denied. Yet this is the State 
of the Puritans and that of Roger Williams. Another 
time I went to the Plantations to defend an unfortunate, 
and the judge, in judging, said that somehow the evi- 
dence was so 6C nicely balanced ” he was in grave doubt 
whether the thing had been done. Whereupon he ex- 
changed whispers with the clerk at his side, and, rallying 
from his quandary, pronounced my client guilty beyond 
a reasonable doubt ! The lawyer on the other side ex- 
changed winks with me as if he should say, “ Beat that 
in your State if you can.” 

March 15 th. A liquor case, in which I witnessed the 
spectacle of a woman, who before had told me that she 
had repeatedly bought liquor of various kinds of defend- 
ant and told the same story to the officer, swearing 
positively in court that she never had any liquor what- 
ever of the man, save a pint or so of porter, and that she 
didn’t buy of him, but sent by him to another town to 
buy it for’ her. Other testimony bore more strongly on 
the accused, and he was mulcted. The constable in this 
case was fresh , and the emotions of surprise that rolled 
over his face as the woman bore witness were interesting 
to behold. 

This liquor-seller, himself a licensed liquor-seller in 
another town, to match his story to the pint-porter-tale 
of the woman, said that he took from the woman a pint 
bottle and went to a druggist’s store in his town, and got 


*78 TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 

the bottle filled with porter, and, not to contradict the 
woman, paid the extraordinary price of forty cents, 
whereas, besides that porter is seldom so sold (on 
draught, perhaps never at drug-stores), it is matter of 
common knowledge that the best foreign bottled porter, 
bottle and all, costs not exceeding twenty-five cents per 
pint bottle. Then, to break the force of his admission, 
made to the officer before procuring counsel, that he 
once delivered some gin to the woman in the course of 
trade, taking an order therefor and supposing that to be 
lawful, he said he once simply carried some “ stuff” to 
her, meaning the porter transaction as elucidated. 

Planting himself upon this sworn gospel truth of his 
client, counsel proceeded strenuously to argue that the 
woman and defendant by every rule of law and fairness 
were to be believed ; that the officer was a budget of 
bias not entitled to a particle of credit, and that the man 
who had sworn to defendant’s delivery of three quart 
bottles of gin at different times, was, though unim- 
peached and apparently fair-minded and without motive 
of falsehood, nevertheless a miserable, good-for-nothing 
liar, plotting to undermine the liberties of an American 
citizen. Case appealed. Ere it be tried in the serener 
temple of justice two or five months hence, who can tell 
but that the man witness may be corrupted, as was the 
woman, or, if not, that the jury, assailed by overpower- 
ing logic and eloquence, soaring on equal pinion with the 
eagle, may execrate the lower court for rank stupidity in so 
oppressing an honorable subject of the Commonwealth ? 

March Iftth. A complaint for brutal assault on an in- 
offensive man by “ Jack Smith,” an old, very old 
offender. Defendant ex re. Here’s a job for Officer 
A to catch this bully hitter this side the line, and then 
try with him the battle of arrest. By the way, it trans- 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


79 


pires that the depot ticket man, who menaced Officer A 
with the prosecution of his son, was in a financial limbo, 
wrought by his own misfeasance, and hoped to extricate 
himself by a feat of Boycotting. 

March 17th. An ordinary case of assault to-day was 
made extraordinarily interesting to the spectators, partly 
by defendant’s counsel, partly by defendant himself, and 
partly by the court. “ A scene in court” cannot be 
transferred to canvas, and as little can it be to paper. 
The attempt is sometimes made, and a feeble attempt I 
may here make. 

The learned counsel in opening the case observed that 
his client was a very industrious, peaceable, and inoffen- 
sive citizen of Sprigton, possessed of property and of a 
mild disposition, and wholly incapable of the rudeness 
and violence imputed to him by the complainant in her 
testimony, and these things he doubted not would ap- 
pear to the court as well from his client as other wit- 
nesses he should call. Three witnesses were sworn, two 
of whom, though they did not fully confirm the pleasant 
impressions left by the opening, yet tended that way. 
Witness No. B was the mild-mannered defendant him- 
self, who, as he took the stand, glanced around with a 
look of some impatience. Omitting preliminaries and 
the inevitable irrelevancies and superfluities and sinuosi- 
ties which make part of such literature, the examination 
may be reported as follows : 

Counsel. Now, Mr. R., we want you to tell the truth 
about this matter. Did you kick the woman as she says 
you did ? 

Witness. Kick her ! No. not a d — d bit of it. 

Counsel. Well, keep quiet, don’t get excited. You 
didn’t kick her — did you push her ? 

Witness. Push her ! By G — d, I guess I did, and if 


80 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


I had had a revolver I’d shot her, d — n me if I 
wouldn’t. 

Com't. Beware, sir, of your profanity ! (sternly). 

Counsel . You pushed her ; well, how hard did you 
push her ? 

Witness . Pushed her so that she went out of the 
house headforemost, and 1 wish ’t’ad broke her d — d 
neck (gesticulating frantically). 

Court. Hold, sir ! Do you know where you are ? 

Witness. Yes, 1 guess I do, and by G — d (with 
electric speed) P 11 carry this case before twelve men — if 
a man can’t defend himself against a woman, coming on 
his own premises to dun him when he don’t owe her a 
d — d cent, and — ” 

Court. Mr. Officer, take that man forthwith to the 
lock-up ; this case is suspended till afternoon. 

(Impressive silence in court what time Mr. Officer 
puts on his coat and eyes the now seated defendant.) 

Counsel. Your Honor, it will be extremely incon- 
venient for me to be here this afternoon ; 1 have a very 
special appointment elsewhere. If your Honor could 
possibly overlook for the time my client’s indiscretion, 
which, I grant, is very great indeed, I think he may now 
so see his situation as to conduct himself with propriety. 
1 should hope, if your Honor please, that he might be 
tried further. 

Court softens, and witness retakes the stand and under- 
goes a brief cross-questioning, but not without tokens of 
an irascibility which it was obvious he was without 
power to suppress. Nevertheless, his lawyer proceeded 
with the utmost sangfroid to argue that his client could 
not be guilty of assault — that allowing he pushed the 
woman at all, which was doubtful, his act was only the 
moliter manus imposuit , which the law justified in the 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


81 


owner of premises as against a trespasser, and so forth. 
G uilty. 

A hawker and peddler lined. Some lawyer had told 
him he would require no license if he went round and 
took orders for coffee and tea, and afterward delivered 
the goods, but would if he delivered the goods at same 
time he took the orders. Could not see the point. 

March \%tli. This is the day after St. Patrick’s Bay. 
Considering the general inebriety and obstreperosity 
whereof general rumor speaks, the harvesting of the 
police proved conspicuously small. Accounted for by 
a prevailing disposition of the constabulary to let Iliber- 
nianism revel and rollic on the anniversary of its patron 
saint. This may or may not be statesmanship in the 
domestic peace-keepers. Well it undoubtedly is to lean 
always to the side of liberty and a little more indulgently 
in time of holidays. Banger is that in giving reins to 
liberty reins may be given to license. Reins given to 
license gives society over to anarchy. Is St. Patrick’s 
Bay sufficiently sacred and supreme to authorize this 
tendency to social chaos ? Is the Erin element of the 
Puritan Commonwealth so potential a factor that it must 
needs be propitiated by slackening the statutes when 
Paddy O’Raffedy lists to go on his biggest spree ? If 
any think it isn’t, let the laws be severely enforced the 
next time Paddy lists. In the resulting howl that shall 
go up from the “ foreign born,” see if the politicians 
(which means about everybody, Puritan and all) don’t 
take alarm lest the State in the next election may receive 
detriment. Accordingly, the non-action yesterday of 
the police was but a piece of deference to pretty well- 
known public sentiment. 

One case only seemed to grow directly out of the 
celebration— that of a woman picked up drunk in the 


82 


TEN" YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


niglit by the wayside. Her story was that in celebrating 
she “ took a sip too many — some whiskey on top of 
beer.” 

Two peace-disturbers were tried at length, and at 
length convicted. The daddy of one of them, in paying 
the bill, said he would not “ begridge the money if his 
son was guilty.” Told him he was. He said twelve 
men would not say so. Asked him whether he would 
think so if twelve men said so ? Said he had not 
thought much of that. Told him he better take the case 
to twelve men. “ O coom elong now,” cried a fellow- 
countrymen of this justice-questioner, “ what ye stand 
blarneying for with the jidge, an ye know yer boy as up 
to ’t. Coom elong, his riv’rance ’ll moolk yersilf, an 
he ought, if ve don mind now.” Exeunt. 

March 19 th. Rendered a labored, if not learned, 
decision in the u picker case.” Gave picker to plaintiff. 
Defendant went off probably picking flaws in the 
decision. Plaintiff picked up his papers, smiled, and 
stopped picking. Other things did on this civil day. 
Among others, marvelled that men should so contend 
over matters so small, and yet marvelled not, seeing that 
men are made up as they are and are as they are made. 
An old and intelligent man of the county, who lately 
served a long term as a juror, said to me a yesterday ago 
that but few of the cases of the term appeared to involve 
more than twenty-five or thirty dollars ; that the prevail- 
ing party in the best- won case must have been much out 
of pocket, and how people could engage in such litiga- 
tion he, ex-juryman, could not understand. Without 
seeming to know it, the ex juryman was but part and 
parcel of the same people he was criticising ; has, no 
doubt, several times in his life been in the same litigious 
pucker, and may be again, by dint of the same human 


A SECTION" OF THE JUDGE’S JOUENAL. 


83 


nature, to-morrow. It is an old, old story — wondering 
why people should go to law so. The astonished 
censors might as well wonder why people are born. 
Nothing so common as to affect a dislike for law. Yet 
what more common than to plunge into it, not one time 
in two in any rational hope of gaining a dollar, but with 
the loss often of dollars, days, sleep, and friendship 
staring the suitor in the face ! Truth is, men like law 
as much as politicians like law-making, and it would 
seem the older and more £< Christian’ ’ the State, the 
more do the law-making and litigating bud forth and 
abound. Witness Massachusetts grinding out, six 
months per annum, “ Laws and Resolves,” enactory and 
re-enactory, amendatory and repealatory, experimentory, 
contradictory, cruditory, and even retaliatory, as if for 
the very purpose of fomenting among the people mis- 
understandings and disputations to keep the lawyers at 
it, nolens miens . 

March 21 st. For several reasons I would like a clerk. 
He would spare me much record -making, complaint- 
drawing, cost-taxing, fee-charging, money-handling, 
witness-swearing, question-asking, and question- answer- 
ing — in a word, a good deal of drudgery and a vast deal 
of puttering. I should thus have more time to meditate 
law, cogitate evidence, weigh arguments, and balance 
probabilities. Also it would, to worldly view, be a 
little more dignified to have a clerk in front or flank to 
keep more at arm’s-length distance the courtly crowd. 
I should, too, be spared immediate, though not inter- 
mediate, contact with various villainous breaths and other 
unsavory odors emanating from apparel, person, and 
even presence.. But then I should not know so thor- 
oughly as I now do the whole business of this little court, 
from the cross-mark of complainant to the conclusion of 


84 


TEH YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


the matter, .from papers in blank to papers filled and 
filed away, from base to spire, in all its architecture and 
inwardness, civil and criminal, magisterial and minis- 
terial, judicial, clerical, and financial, of this little tom-tit 
temple of justice. There is another advantage which, 
with a clerk, I should be barred — the advantage already 
hinted, if it be an advantage, and I guess it is — I should 
not come into such absolute contact with the human 
nature which it is the prerogative and special mission, 
forsooth, of the police court to descry, fathom, analyze, 
and adjudicate for and upon. It may be disagreeable, 
even offensive, repulsive, repellent, the proximity oft- 
times of complainants and witnesses and culprits, men 
reeking from brothels and women scarce less rank, with 
drooling babies laden, odoriferous as a battalion of un- 
corked vials of furious stench ; but out of it cometli in- 
struction, knowledge —nay, out of it cometh somewhat 
the bandage that blinds the sight and the nerve that 
steadies the arm of him .who holds the scales. It is 
hazarded that this contiguity of the magistrate to the 
nature of the humanity he is to judge serves in some 
degree the office of judicial preparation. Possibly it 
enables him the better to look through nature up to 
nature’s Sovereign, and so better to temper judgment 
with its all-essential quality — mercy. 

Received application for commitment to insane asylum 
of a deaf and dumb man, thirty-two years old, whose dis- 
turbance of mind, a tendency to violence, is thought to 
have been induced by over-study , he being an educated 
mute, and much addicted to reading and a morbid prying 
into books. Among his other freaks of late has been a 
ravenous devouring of paper. For want of other 
sufficient supply, he has torn the paper from the house 
ceilings and masticated it with great vigor, if not relish. 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 85 

His father, a worthy man, has other children, sons and 
daughters grown, doing well in the world, not burdened 
at the start, as was this unfortunate, and showing no pre- 
disposition to brainial infirmity. 

March 22 d. A young man confessed to being drunk 
of a yesterday. His friends, through the officer, asked 
the court to talk to him. The court talked to him. 
Two other young men confessed to breaches of the 
peace. One of them was twenty-one years old last 
month, tall, finely formed, neatly dressed, and handsome 
as a picture. He was intimate a year or two ago with a 
young lady, who for some cause jilted him, since which 
he has been carousing. His father, a nice man, holding 
a responsible position in a neighboring town, is exceed- 
ingly troubled over the waywardness of his son. The 
other peace-breacher was older, and wore the marks of a 
longer degradation. He was before the court last Octo- 
ber for a reckless assault. The joint offence of the two 
was a boisterous outbreak of passion, profanity, and ob- 
scenity, uniting with violent demonstrations of force in 
the vicinity of the saloon itself, where they entered late at 
night in a state of intoxication and were refused the 
liquor they called for. The neighborhood was aroused 
by their outcries, and the saloon-keeper trembled for his 
decanters, if not for his head. Here was an opportunity 
for a moral lecture, seeing that the offenders were clearly 
ashamed, and that there was present a class of spectators 
whose countenances would make more effective the 
homily. Used the occasion as best I could. Their 
somewhat heavy fines, one heavier than the other, were 
both paid, defendants appearing to have money enough 
of their own or forthcoming from the pockets of by- 
standing friends. Hone of the family friends of either, 
it is said, were present 


86 


TEN - YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


March 23 d. Heard the case of the deaf and dumb 
man. All told it was a novel proceeding, and pitiable. 
The testimony of the doctors, joined to that of the re- 
spondent’s father and the gaze and grimaces of the mute 
(which, indeed, were the most convincing), left no 
doubt as to the insanity, or possibly the incipient idiocy, 
and the poor fellow was committed. 

March 'Zkth. An unlicensed dog-keeper paid his 
statute prescribed fine — $15. Except prosecutions under 
the Sunday law, no cases rouse more ire than dog cases. 
Most of the complaints are instigated by dog-keepers 
who have paid their license fees and are wrathful to see 
their fellow dog-keepers not paying theirs. So they 
stand off and say stee-boy to the constables, who are only 
too ready to dog the dog-law breakers. The accused come 
into court sullen, sour, and in a state of defiance, and, 
though nine times out of ten the evidence is all against 
them and the law is as plain as the noses on their faces, 
they draw forth their purses as if submitting to an act of 
oppression that ought to stir the stones of the neighbor- 
hood to rise and mutiny. Particularly do they show 
their teeth and bristle their hair and snarl with special 
emphasis when it transpires that the prosecutor pockets, 
besides his usual fees, $5 of the fine. Then is the Com- 
monwealth a despotism and its officials the offscourings 
of the earth ! Is it that these dog-masters have imbibed 
the worst qualities of caninity that they are so furiously 
demonstrative when the State calls them to account for 
joining in the dog-dance without paying the govern- 
mental fiddler ? One is curious sometimes to know 
whether they are resenting more a wrong to themselves 
or some wicked imputation on their dog. It is remarked 
that the fine never makes them think less of their hound. 
On the contrary, they seem doubly attached to their 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


87 


quadruped. They don’t go and kill him ; they go and 
license him. It is clear that their idea is, “ Love me, 
love my dog.” 

March %5th. Last night between nine and ten 
o’clock, as my wife was reading aloud to me from 
“ Homo Sum,” three French wood-choppers knocked at 
ray kitchen-door in a high degree of excitement. Being 
in a martyr mood from a fresh hearing of some of the 
exalted sentiments of Paulus, I asked the choppers in 
and had a prolonged interview. For the first few 
minutes, from what could be gleaned out of the French 
chopped English, it came over me that a great tragedy 
had been enacted, and that my work of the morrow was 
to be one of no inconsiderable magnitude. Especially 
did it so seem when one of my guests produced from the 
depths of a capacious pocket two carnal weapons of the 
similitude of revolvers, and simultaneously declared them 
loaded ; and another declared that but for his prowess in 
staying the arm of a certain audacious assailant, his 
fellow-guest, who then and there stood before me, would 
have been three hours or so ago a dead man ! Yerily, 
the particular hairs of my head began to stand on end, 
and it was with difficulty I could sufficiently collect 
myself to take, much less examine, the deadly weapons. 
A recollection, however, of the serenity of Paulus' under 
exciting circumstances calmed me somewhat, and I pro- 
ceeded to an inspection of the arms. It was found that 
the chambers of both revolvers were empty, that one 
was without a hammer, without a trigger, and without 
—well, a lock, and that the other, though it would cock, 
would not revolve, and considering the rust that pos- 
sessed it, probably had not revolved for a long time. 
The inspection over, I resumed colloquial relations with 
my guests and answered sundry questions, among others : 


88 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


“Eef toz not gate kime to aim soocli a ting at any 
mans ?” “ Eef any mans has right for to carry peestol 

and say he shoot ?” “ Eef any mans carry peestol and 

say he shoot, any mans may no twitch it way eef he 
smart anoof, by gar ?” 

These, indeed, were “ sockdologers,” and it required 
no slight skill to parry them. Being judge and on my 
own premises gave me some advantage, and the pointed 
interrogatories did less execution than they otherwise 
might. Still, with the peestols there as witnesses, it was 
hard not to admit that any mans, who might essay too 
shoot with them, would be guilty of a criminal extrava- 
gance. Driven to this extremity, I took refuge in a 
quasi judicial fortress which I now proudly hold. I 
suggested to the choppers that, as an act of prudence, 
they leave the dangerous weapons in possessions curios , 
lest in the event of the owner thereof making me a polite 
call, a sense of official obligation should constrain the 
issuance of a warrant for larceny of the said peestols. 
The proposition was gracefully assented to, the choppers 
took cordial leave, and, together with my better-half, I 
advanced through another chapter of “ Homo Sum.” 

March Z§th. A dog-day in March. The law says that 
dog-owners shall not keep their dogs without license, un- 
less they (the dogs, not dog-owners) be pups under three 
months of age. A pup -keeper was arraigned to-day, and 
his defence raised the issue, Is the pup three months 
old ? The question involved and developed a variety of 
learning. The pup was brought into court, and, though 
not sworn, was examined— that is to say, pup stood up 
and was in a manner examined and cross-examined by 
experts in canine infancy and longevity, who thereupon 
rendered an opinion. It was rather a shy opinion, but 
it tended to show pup of an age inculpating its master. 


A SECTION" OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 89 

Other testimony there was touching the number of 
days required by pups to get their eyes open after birth. 
Some said seven ; some, eight ; some, nine. The weight 
of opinion was nine, but much depended on the pups. 
Some pups were more precocious than others. One 
witness swore like a trooper that he visited the native 
kennel of the identical pup in court between the 7th and 
15th days of last December, and the pup’s eyes were 
then open. Allowing this to be true, and the witness 
was not fatally discredited, then the pup must have been 
at the time of trial at least three and a half months old. 
To this conclusion 1 came. But it appeared that the 
pup’s master, who, though six feet tall, was a young 
man, and wept bitterly during all the hearing, had owned 
the pup but a few weeks. When he bought the pup of 
the pirp-raiser the pup-raiser told the pup-buyer that pup 
was only eight or nine weeks old. Defendant, with a 
burst of tears, said he believed it. It was a Sunday 
transaction, as was confessed, defendant having bargained 
for pup on the Lord’s day, and on same day paid there- 
for $3 in hens and $1 in cash. This flagrant violation of 
the Lord’s day served a little to impeach the weeping 
■witness, but as he seemed a very credulous young man, 
the court believed that he believed the pup-raiser’s lie. 
Now, among the settled things in law, of which I may 
say the number is limited, one is ignorantia legis nemi- 
nem excusat. Nevertheless, considering the credulity of 
the defendant, the tender age of his pup at oldest, and 
the extreme grief into which the prosecution had plunged 
him, the court, in a fit of magnanimity, ordered his dis- 
charge, provided, however, that he (defendant) repair 
forthwith to the town-clerk’s office in Trelawney, and pay 
a license fee of $2 as an aegis of protection against his 
pup being brought again into court. The released pris- 


90 


TEN" YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


oner went off with his young dog much elated, and the 
constable looked glum and revengeful. 

March 28th. Two cases begun of petition to enforce 
mechanics’ lien. Counsel for petitioners opened his 
cases, when counsel for respondents espied, or thought 
he did, sundry defects or rents in the phraseological bags 
containing petitioners’ cases. It was suggested that the 
bags were insufficient in point of texture to hold said 
cases. The lawyer who picked these flaws intimated 
that the legs of the cases were dangling through the 
woof and warp of the bags when his brother brought 
them into court ; to which the piqued attorney responded 
that his brother s cases had no legs to dangle, much less 
to stand upon. Here the court shook its head and signi- 
fied a willingness to hear proper discussion touching the 
bag3, but could not indulge the gentlemen in insinua- 
tions that cases had legs, however that might be implied 
by the vulgarism, sometimes heard in legal debate, of a 

case going on all fours. ’ ’ Whereupon forensic propriety 
was resumed, and law books bearing on the bag issue 
were in great profusion produced on the one side and the 
other. Arguments were plied pro and con, hairs were 
split, and webs of finesse were spun and woven, till the 
court became confused, perplexed, and profoundly igno- 
rant whether law, as Blackstone saith, be the perfection 
of reason or, as some irreverently assert, the perfection 
of nonsense. 

For the purpose of determining this question with 
some degree of certainty, the distracted court took into 
its possession the afore-mentioned bags and all the 
authorities friendly and hostile thereto, and adjourned 
proceedings to another day ; and presently a dozen or 
two witnesses and several dozen interested loafers strayed 
off in a state of bewildered disappointment. 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


91 


March 29th. Another ease of prodigious swearing. 
The complaint against an Irishman, his spouse, and 
mother-in-law for conduct which complainant averred 
had repeatedly been carried to such limit that something, 
in the name of decency, must he done. The conduct 
described to be the assembling of the accused three 
about the front door of complainant’s tenement, and 
assailing his daughter with epithets the most opprobrious 
and charges the most atrocious, and otherwise running 
on in strains and streams that might easily win the first 
prize in the high school of ribaldry. The complainant, 
his daughter, and a neighbor take the stand, and swear 
that such was the conduct of the defendants in the broad 
sunlight of Sunday last ; that the torrent of defendants’ 
abuse was loudly continued for some fifteen minutes, and 
that thereby were called together men, women, and 
children from all the vicinage. The defendants take 
the stand and swear this accusatory tale is all a mon- 
strous lie ; that, though they were standing a minute 
or two near complainant’s doorway, they called no 
names, hurled no charges, used no dirty speech— indeed, 
scarcely spoke, and that no people of the neighborhood 
assembled, attracted by what they did or said, or what 
anybody else did or said. 

Here were three witnesses swearing positively to a 
state of facts and three witnesses, on the same ground at 
the same time, swearing to a state of things wholly 
different. On either side the testimony so lay together 
in parallel lines that to believe one or the other of the 
six witnesses was to believe that three out of the six 
were guilty of deliberate perjury. It is not a slight 
thing to draw the line and say wdiere is the turpitude. 
Only a little better than guess-work is it sometimes. 
Once I heard an old and eminent jurist of the State say, 


92 


TEH YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


in private conversation, tliat in getting at many matters 
of law it was “ a good deal guess-work. ” It is not less so 
in court in getting at many matters of fact. Those wdio 
have listened at the door-rooms of juries, consulting in 
the still hours of night, as not a few anxious attorneys 
have done, know pretty well how much juries guess at 
the law and the fact. So familiarly known is this guess- 
ing habit of juries, that other lawyers of long experience, 
besides a prominent ex-solicitor of Boston, have said they 
would as lief turn up a copper as take the verdict of a 
jury. 

But there was little need of guess-work to-day. 
“ Witnesses are to be weighed, not counted,” says the 
law adage. “ Testimony is like an arrow shot from a 
long bow — the force of it depends upon the hand that 
draws it,” said Dr. S. Johnson very aptly. Where the 
witnesses are evenly balanced in point of number, and 
the two stories are diametrically opposite, and the oppor- 
tunities of observation were ecpial, perjury on one of the 
two sides is manifest. How can three or more witnesses 
take the stand one after another and perjuriously testify 
to a variety of things without the perjury manifesting 
itself in the look of their face, the pitch, tone, and tem- 
per of their voice, and that uneasiness of body and soul 
with which wilful falsehood afflicts the falsifier ? It is 
believed it cannot be done. Apart, therefore, from 
circumstances corroborating the complaining testimony, 
the perjury of these Sabbath-day breakers obviously 
rolled off their tongues and stood forth on their very 
eyeballs. 

A dog case followed the above, and was far less im- 
pressive. 

March 30 th. Always within the jurisdictional domain 
of a police court is there some busybody whose special 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


93 


mission and malignity it seems to be to liector and har- 
ass the good little judge and his courtiers. Unless the 
magistrate be of lofty mind and philosophic turn, com- 
bining also with these qualities a respectable streak of 
combative independence, it is possible that the busybody 
would drive the judge and his particular friends all stark 
mad. Most often this personage is a chronic place- 
seeker, who aforetime has been a deputy sheriff or chief 
of a country police, or a limited trial- justice rejoicing in 
the title of “ Squire,” and in the squabble of politics or 
some fit of public disgust was thrown up high and dry 
upon the strand, where no subsequent tide of appointment 
or election has reached to set him afloat. lie it is who, 
with a smattering of law, a dialect of police, a spirit of 
wormwmod and a respectability, forsooth, not wholly ex- 
tinct, goes round among the people sjpargere voces in 
vulgum ambiguas , backbiting the court, sneering at its 
officers, tampering with witnesses, condoling with pris- 
oners, and groaning aloud that such things should be and 
not stir Rome to rise in arms. 

Nor does this patriot and reformer lack for hearers, 
lie never, to be sure, gets a majority with him nor often 
a good-sized faction ; otherwise he might get again into 
office. But he gets a small audience here and there, 
gives impetus now and then to a lie or scandal, and 
manages perchance to roll the flake of a mistake into a 
sizable snowball of misfeasance, insomuch that Messrs. 
A B and C stop by the w r ayside and remark, “ See 
that snowball !” He, the ex-chief or ex-squire, is a 
mischief-maker. To be plain about it, he is a nuisance. 
A thorn he is in the side of the rogue-catcliingconstable, 
and a miserable mosquito diurnally buzzing about the ears 
of the honorable court. Of course, everybody exclaims, 
“Who minds what Tom Bittergall says?” Nobody 


94 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


minds much. But how many like to quote him to serve 
some sly little purpose as hitting the court or persons of 
its supposed body-guard ! Ilow curious human nature 
will now and then prompt a stalwart friend to tell the 
judge what Tom Bittergall says, and add straightway, 
“ that’s Tom, of course.” Wherefore tell it if ’twas 
Tom ? Alas ! even the stalwart friend has his moments 
of weakness. The judge knows it. He knows, after 
much trial of human kind, that all are of one blood, that 
the steadiest are very variable, and few are so sweet and 
saint-like as not to enjoy the experiment of pin-pricking 
a police judge. 

March 31 st. This has been a day of extraordinary ex- 
perience. Three railers and brawlers, otherwise called 
rixatrices communes , have held high carnival at the 
very foot, if not on the very top, of the throne of jus- 
tice. Gladly would I transcribe to the leaves of this 
journal the scenes at the temple, as they are fixed in my 
mind, that the tribunals of all future ages might take 
warning how they summon to the bar of public justice 
three rixatrices at once. Futile as would be the attempt, 
I am deterred from it by another consideration. I 
shrink to entail obloquy upon a representative of the 
bench who, however he proved so unequal to the emer- 
gency of the hour, strove with a high sense of duty and 
with whatever power in him lay to preserve unsullied 
the ermine it happened to him so unworthily to wear. 
Y et I cannot but feel it due to truth to record here my 
conviction, that no police-court judge can take in hand 
at one and the same time three brawling women with- 
out incurring imminent risk of getting the worst of it and 
having his dignity torn, as it were, into infinitesimal 
shreds. 

In vain do I look around me in the gathering of these 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


95 


evening shades for a vestige of the decorum, gravity, 
and fulness of aspect of which I seemed possessed in 
the morning. Even the single item of authority I seem 
to he utterly divested of. Did I not cry out at the top 
of my voice, “ Sit down, you wench — peace, be still !” 
And did she not rise up before all the people, and with 
clenched list and defiance in her eye bawl out, “ I’ve 
seen bigger judges than you, and don’t care a pig- tail 
for the whole boodle of ye !” and did not the two other 
brawlers rise up, as in chorus, and brawl, led on by this 
prima donna of insolence and temerity ? Punish them 
for contempt ? As if after such a breach in its walls 
there was any saving of a court’s dignity. Non sum 
quails eram. Alas ! I have too often felt before that 
life is but a battle. When I attained to the eminence, 
which a yesterday ago I seemed securely to hold, I 
thought it might be otherwise. I was thinking that for 
me at least life might henceforth be a joy, a repose, an 
unquestioned holding of the fort of honor. The ruin 
about me to-night of all that I held so dear but too truly 
revives the sorrowful belief and sad, sad fact, “ Life is 
but a battle.” 

April 1st. About a year ago an irate mill operative 
threw at a fourteen-year-old boy, who was (i fooling” in 
the mill-room, a knife, cutting the lad’s foot. Later, for 
a like roguery, he let fly a bobbin that brought a bump 
on the back of boy’s head. Yesterday, for a third 
offence of fooling, he hurled a a crary” that hit near the 
left eye, and made a smart little wound. The last hit 
was one too many for the maternal forbearance, and to- 
day the impetuous missile-flinger was impleaded and 
pleaded guilty. Ilis impetuosity and penitence were 
deemed mitigatory, and the penalty was a light fine and 
a lecture. The man was afterward heard to say that he 


90 


TEN" YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


would have rather had a heavy fine and be done with it. 
So much for casting pearls before swine. 

April 2 d. Three Frenchmen tried for an assault on 
an old man. The latter lives a recluse in part of an out- 
of-the-way farmhouse, in another part of which Isaac, 
an old bachelor, keeps old-bachelor’s hall. While the 
bachelor was tending his cow and pigs in the little black 
barn near by, and the hermit was in his quarters, the 
French trio, excited by cider, knocked vehemently at 
the hermit’s door and demanded admittance. Declined. 
The knockers knocked harder. The hermit was 
alarmed. The barbarians caught up a pick-axe and be- 
gan prying at the door. The hermit caught up two 
defunct pistols and, rushing out of another door, bran- 
dished the arms. At him rushed the door-pryers, and 
threw him down upon a pile of bricks, and despoiled 
him of the pistols, and pounded him, and other wrongs 
to him did, insomuch that the hermit cried with a loud 
voice unto Isaac, the bachelor ; and Isaac, leaving his 
cow and pigs, came to the rescue, and the barbarians 
skedaddled. This is what was the matter with the 
Frenchmen who so had “ peestol ” on the brain the 25th 
ultimo. 

Sent to the House of Correction for three months a 
woman for a drunken revelry by night. In the storm 
of her draughts she made pandemonium of her house- 
hold, broke in a neighbor’s window, and otherwise made 
night hideous. This woman has six children, the oldest 
but twelve years old, and the youngest but ten months ; 
yet humanity cried out, “ Part the mother from her 
infant.” The father is a steady man, who works in a 
foundry of an adjacent town, and complains that in his 
absence his wife goes off to get drunk, leaving the chil- 
dren to starve, freeze, or burn up. Three times hereto- 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


fore, out of regard to her children and supposed strait- 
ened circumstances, not knowing her case well, I have 
declined to receive complaint against her for petty 
larceny. She appears to be a kleptomaniac as well as 
inebriate. 

April 4 th. A bold Rhode Islander came over the line, 
vending lager-beer with a free hand on the right and on 
the left. The evidence was abundant, as evidently the 
vendor so thought, for he presented the very infrequent 
spectacle nowadays of a liquor-seller pleading guilty 
without any shuffling. The liking these gentlemen of the 
bar have for the traffic is only equalled by their dislike 
of admitting any connection with it. "When they plead 
guilty it is clear they do it with a mental protest, and 
when they pay their fines the state of their mind is very 
much as the state of their money — very foul, torn, mixed 
and crumpled up. The saloonish smell of it makes even 
money exceedingly offensive. It has the odor of pesti- 
lence, as if it might, indeed, be some root of evil. 

April 5th. A girl twenty years old (Irish) tells her 
tale of woe, and warrant issues for the French paramour. 
As usual, a promise of marriage kept to the ear and 
broken to the hope. But the case to-day w r as of peculiar 
aggravation. The putative father, 22 years old, went 
with the girl about a year ago to see some friends in 
Boston. Returning after a few days, he professed to 
his father that Ellen was his bride, she assenting, upon 
William’s previous assurance that the knot should be 
presently tied. The groom’s parents were content, and 
provided a tenement, and the twain set up housekeeping 
and lived as man and wife till some five months ago. 
During the cohabitation frequent promises of marriage 
were made and as often broken. This condition of 
shame and duplicity ripened into a woman’s burst of 


.8 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


non-endurance on a certain Sunday. The soi disant 
husband, leaving his soi disant wife with little or no 
wood in the house (the Sunday cold), went off with a 
party of shopmates to an evil house in au evil quarter of 
neighboring Rhode Island. The shopmates in their 
revelry had a row, and one of the number, returning be- 
fore the rest, in his drink and ire let out the day’s doings. 
Upon return of the marriage-promiser, the indignant 
mistress, whose pregnancy was of household knowledge, 
upbraided the seducer, and he, high in liquor, stormed 
as an injured husband, called her a strumpet, and other 
airs of injury put on. Words ran higher and higher, 
abuse followed abuse, till at length the girl in a state of 
frenzy was induced to leave the house upon proffer of $5 
to enable her to go to her mother’s in a neighboring 
town. Thither she went to unfold the secret of her fall, 
and lay off the uneasy mask of wedlock. Since the 
Sunday break other promises of marriage have been 
made only to be broken. This girl’s story more than 
any similar one 1 have before heard betrayed a fire of 
soul that seemed capable of suicide, homicide, or any 
other soul-burning act of desperation. If this oat-sow- 
ing scion of Gaul thinketh he standeth, let him take 
heed lest he fall. 

April §th. Another lager-beerist of Little Rhody came 
offending this side the line, and was nabbed by Officer 
A. The minimum fine, $50, was the penalty. 

It is a popular idea that for unlawful sales of the 
lighter intoxicants the lighter fines should be imposed. 
Popular ideas are apt to be right, and in the wake of 
this one I am content to follow. In cases where no nice 
questions of fact or law are involved the popular mind 
jumps to better conclusions of justice than any judge, 
jury, or other assembly of men can reach by feeling the 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


99 


way. Tlie larger the deliberative assembly, the less apt 
is it to be just, for no sooner does it begin to inquire 
than it begins to debate, and no sooner does it begin to 
debate what sometimes is scarcely debatable, than it 
divides and takes sides. Then passion, prejudice, and 
pride of opinion come in to obstruct deliberation. A 
thing will seem just because conceit or a spirit of op- 
position would have it so. The popular mind reaches 
its judgments without this friction and resentment of 
discussion. For, however there may exist the same 
passions and prejudices among the people at large as 
serve to distract an assembly of people, there is no pride 
of opinion with the unassembled multitude, and passion 
and prejudice play but small part in its quiet council 
chambers. There is just that sufficient contact of mind 
with mind without the heat that warps the individual 
reason. The multitude gravitates to a conclusion in 
matters of common justice. That is to say, it forms 
judgment naturally — without any purpose of doing so. 
In the process every individual is assisted by every other 
without either being conscious of getting the benefit of 
the thought of any other. Pride and obstinacy have 
nothing to do with the case. A judge goes to work to 
do justice as a task, and is necessarily more or less arti- 
ficial and opinionative and crotchety and even selfish in 
the work — selfish in the sense of having undue regard of 
what people will say of him in the matter. All this 
holds truer with a jury and truer still with a legislative 
or other deliberative assembly. But the quality of jus- 
tice, like that of mercy, is not so “ strained.” 

How shall you know what the popular idea or mind 
is ? A vote does not always index it. But, though 
there is no other way of ascertaining it, it often happens 
that nothing is better known, vote or no vote. It is 


100 


TEK YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


caught up from the speech of the y>eople— not so much 
from anything that anybody says as from innumerable 
little hints, humors, doubts, dissents, nods, negations, 
and flashes of silence. The popular idea is in the air. 
Observation can no more escape it than the weather-vane 
can dispute the wind. 

April 7th. Fast — dies non juridicus. 

April 8 th. A French adult who did not fast from his 
potations yesterday, but over-indulged therein, confessed 
to his indiscretion, and paid the stipulated one dollar. 
Excluding court fees and figuring the other costs at 
lowest, it cost the county $7. 65 to dispense this piece of 
justice ! The law was so made last year, and at this 
hour of the present year of our Lord it is undergoing 
change, and in the next year it is reasonable to infer that 
the Legislature will tinker it again — how , the Lord only 
knows. This court hath discouraged this class of prose- 
cutions under the law as existing, regarding them a 
travesty on justice and an extravagance in which even 
the Commonwealth cannot afford to indulge. Strictly 
speaking, the court has no right to set up an opinion 
thus adverse to legislative wisdom ; but seeing the opera- 
tion of this law of the Solons, it is hard for a public ser- 
vant not to resist its effect upon the public treasury. 
As illustrating the sapiency of it, the prosecution to-day 
is in point. The $7.65 which falls to the county to pay, 
the defendant might have paid, and would but for the 
“ dollar drink law. ” Instead, he walked off with money 
in his pocket, and, as the officer felt sure, would before 
night be out of money and drunk again. So divers 
times has it been known to work, and so generally is it 
likely to work. 

The case of a juvenile arraigned for larceny was con- 
tinued to be further considered in presence of a 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


101 


“ visitor” of the Board of State Charities, whom the 
statute presumes to be able — why , pray tell ? — to il- 
lumine the court for a wiser disposition thereof. 

April 9 th. Used up a half day in not trying what prom- 
ised to be an extremely prolix case — a complaint against 
husband for neglect to support his spouse and his pets. 
Seven witnesses against and fourteen for defendant, and 
on each side two lawyers. Before the case opened — in 
fact it did not open — the lawyers began to buzz in that 
significant undertone which betokens disrelish for battle. 
Then there was a bustling retirement to the lobbies of 
counsel and client on each side, and presently a beckon- 
ing to a friend or two to come and join in the nascent 
negotiations, the uninitiated witnesses meanwhile looking 
inquiringly at the unconsulted court, not at all aware 
how glad the unconsulted court was to witness the pros- 
pect of a truce and a treaty between the belligerents with- 
out the court’s aid. By and by the lawyers bustle back 
into court, leaving clients outside, and pore over the 
statutes and put their finger on the chapter and verse, 
and look at one another as if they should say, “ ex- 
actly.” The statute being exactly, the statute-scanners 
scoot out again into the lobbies, and report it to the 
clients, leaving the witnesses in still greater wonder. A 
lull in the court-room — an interval of doubt, anxiety, 
and distress, during which the rickety clock ticks 
solemnly. At length an outside stir as of treaty con- 
cluded, and counsel and clients come trooping trium- 
phantly into the arena of forensic action. Witnesses ap- 
pear relieved, look as if their swearing was near at hand, 
and that after all they had come to court to some pur- 
pose. Alas for them ! They only thus look till one of 
the talky attorneys dispels all their hopes by the 
divulgement of a wondrous plan of compromise. The 


102 


TEK YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


considerate attorney would avoid, if possible, the very 
long hearing which a full understanding of the case 
must necessarily require, and especially did he deem it 
desirable to avoid the unfolding to public view of the 
various domestic infelicities which material evidence in 
the case would inevitably disclose. Therefore, if his 
Honor should please, the parties had in a manner agreed 
to disagree. It was agreed, that is, it was agreed if his 
Honor pleased and the probate court in the near future 
should please, that the two little children of complainant 
and defendant be adopted by their mamma’s mamma, 
and as for the unhappy matrimonial couple, that they 
part company and henceforth molest not one another nor 
any claim against each other make, as growing out of 
what they should eat or wherewithal they should be 
clothed. 

Yery well. But who is to pay the costs of the prose- 
cution ? u Hot I,” says defendant, “ for I’m not 
guilty.” “Then we’ll try you and see , ’ ’ up speaks 
Commonwealth’s calculating counsel. Defendant wrig- 
gles and retorts, “If it is to be compromise, let it 
be compromise ; I’ll not plead guilty, I’ll say nolo con- 
tendere and so saying, defendant did not contend 
either with the Commonwealth or against costs. So 
ended, to one man’s great relief, the case which for a 
week appears to have kept the town of Sprigton all 
agog. 

April 11th. Four one-doll ar drunks. Out of the 
womb of the quadrunkular monstress a triple assault and 
battery. This was the way of it. Two brothers of the 
Emerald Isle had lately been joined by a third brother 
fresh from the ould coontry. To crown the fraternal 
joy, John, the housekeeping one of the trio, invited 
neighbor Dennis in to see the new-comer and take a 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 103 

social bumper. Bumper followed bumper, and therewith 
reminiscence, reminiscence, till the flow of soul resur- 
rected an ancient feud between John the host and Dennis 
the guest. John drew off and sent Dennis sprawling 
over the cook stove. Dennis recovered and flew at 
John, whereat John and all his brethren pounced upon 
Dennis, and him beat, pounded, and bruised till sobriety 
from abroad to the rescue came. The disfigured phiz of 
Dennis in court a sad tale enough told, and, unhappily 
for his ould coontrymen, there was corroboration not 
unlike Ossa piled on Pelion. So Monday registered 
doings of the Lord’s day in one of the towns of this 
bailiwick. Another fight of a similar stripe, from a 
similar cause, at a similar house, between similar parties, 
has been taken notice of by complainants. Not wide 
of the truth is the proverb, “ Drunkenness is the egg 
from which all vices may be hatched. ” 

April 1 2th. A very black eye and a badly bruised 
head in court. Thus it happened. He was a Sunday 
day watchman in a mill, and a short time after the tolling 
of the curfew was homeward plodding his weary way, 
“ wheeling a bit of a hen-coop on a wheelbarrow which 
the boss he said he might.” Two vdiiskey-inflamed 
youths of Hibernian extraction met him on the way, and 
inquired wherefore he was so violating the Lord’s day, 
and accompanied that interrogatory with tipping the 
coop off the barrow. Whereupon the weary watchman 
cried, “ Begone !” and set down his barrow and essayed 
to draw a jack-knife ; at which the Sabbath-keepers lit 
upon the Sabbath-breaker, and one with a big stone 
blackened the eye and bruised the head. 

The officer brought with him into the case a long, 
court-appealing letter from “ a prominent citizen of the 
place,” setting forth that the young men had heretofore 


104 


TEtf TEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


been' (e exemplary,’’ that their parents were poor but 
respectable, and that if a light fine upon each could be 
imposed, perhaps the ends of justice might be satisfied, 
as the Sabbath-keepers appeared to be deeply penitential 
for their Sabbath-keeping. The appeal penetrated, the 
court knowing the prominent citizen, and not doubting 
that he was a better judge than itself. 

April A case that ought to be journalized, and 

would be but for weak eyes. 

April 14 th. An out-going tenant of a farm tried for 
cruelty in depriving the cattle of necessary sustenance. 
Proof enough that he was a scaly farmer, that the cattle 
grew poor on his hands, and were a skeletony-looking 
herd about April 1st, but not that they had been 
“ deprived of necessary sustenance,” with defendant’s 
positive statement that he had fed them three or four 
times a day and watered them well being uncontradicted. 
It transpired that the animus of the complaint was less a 
commiseration for the cows than resentment of the land- 
lord, who was out of pocket on his rent. The court, in 
discharging the scaly farmer, took occasion to urge upon 
him a better observance of the rules of good husbandry. 
A question arose to what age a cow could be kept and 
fed well. The farmer’s opinion seemed to be that at 
about twelve the mooly better be fatted and knocked 
in the head. 

April 15 ih. Disposed of the case of a disturber and a 
toper, and spent a solid hour in hearkening to a story that 
turned out not to be a case. A crime was committed, 
but who did it ? The narrator said Stokes, and the 
suspicions of live others said Stokes, but if suspicion will 
keep silent that it may hear, it will hear what I did— 
that Stokes is not the man the law wants till other 
evidence so points him out. Matters of record took my 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


105 


other time till aching eyes toward tea-time cried hall. I 
then went to my house-cellar to pick over the last barrel 
of apples ! Had turned them out on the floor, and was 
striving with feeble eyes to discover whether there were 
more sound than rotten ones, when a female voice at the 
stair’s top announced that Mr. Wiglittle was wanted. 
W iped my hands and went up. It was a woman. From 
Haddleburg she had come to know if there was a writ 
out for her old man, because if there was, she had come 
to settle. “ My dear woman,” I said, “there mayor 
may not be a writ out for your old man, but if there be 
I cannot settle till he be brought into court in due course 
of law.” “ Oh dony wait for that now,” she said, “ for 
ain it jist what I’m come for to pay ye now, so ye no 
bring the dear man into curt, for he was only a little 
tipsy now, or he’d niver dinny what it is they say of 
him.” “Perhaps,” I observed, “there may be noth- 
ing to pay. I’ve not tried the case — 1 don’t know as he 
is guilty.” “ Oh, yer riv’rance now ! an ye dony mane 
that, for you’ll have him guilty inny way, and sure ye 
better take the moony now and have it off the poor 
man’s mind.” 1 expostulated that I could not, under 
the sanctions of my official oath, take a dime till the poor 
man was judicially adjudged the rioter he was alleged 
to be ; and my caller departed, remarking upon the 
strange law of Ameriky, and I returned to my rotten 
apples. 

April 1 6th. In a modest grocery, in a quiet hamlet, in 
one of the fair towns of this peaceful district, as the 
shades of yesternight were falling upon the unsuspecting 
inhabitants of the place, there arose between two Irish 
swains in America born a material difference o’er a very 
immaterial matter ; and one said to the other, “ You are 
a liar,” and the other said, “ You are another,” and the 


106 


TEH YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


first who so said challenged the second who so said to 
combat,* and he who so dared went forth, and he who 
was so dared went forth also ; then he who had dared 
dared not lift his hand, but he who was dared dared to 
pull off his coat and assume an Iieenan attitude, and as 
an Heenanite he rushed upon the swain who pulled not 
off his coat, and smote him in the eye, lip, and rib, and 
elsewhere, till he bled and fell down, and cried aloud ; 
diligently hearing all which, the Judge said unto the 
Ileenanite, Thou art the man, and a fine shall pay, and 
he did. 

April 18 th. Two contentious litigants contending by 
two contentious attorneys conducting simultaneously two 
cases of contract containing confused questions of law and 
fact, confined the court’s mind for several consecutive 
hours. Contradictory evidence and conflicting legal 
opinions conspired so to confuse the court’s common- 
sense, that a continuance of the contention for further 
consideration was conscientiously considered the correct 
course for the court to take. 

April 19 th. A long and wordy struggle with a very 
positive maiden lady to persuade her that her remedy 
against a gruff farmer for a trespass on her land was a 
suit for damages and not a criminal prosecution. “ If a 
man can’t be arrested when he builds a fence right across 
my land and insults me when 1 tell him to stop, I should 
like to know what he can be arrested for ?” “ If the 

law does not protect a lone woman on her own premises, 
I should like to know what the law is good for ?” These 
things she came asking, these things she staid asking, 
these things she went away asking, and these things, no 
doubt, she is asking still. And these things are still 
ringing in my ears. 

A young man discharged the debt of his yesterday’s 


A SECTION" OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


107 


inebriety by tlie payment of one dollai, and tlie State 
thereby ran in debt the sum of $4.40. 

April 20 ih. The spirit is willing, but the eyes are 
weak. 

April 21 st. A complaint for disturbance of the peace 
was deemed supported by evidence of a man drunk, and 
staggering, and falling, and vomiting (uttering no other 
outcries), about a depot, thereby attracting the attention 
of bystanders and passers-by. Is it law ? 

April 22 d. Last night, just as I had extinguished the 
lamp-light and was in the act of retiring, with these 
lines upon my lips, 

How sweet, when labors close, 

To gather round the aching breast 
The curtain of repose ; 

To stretch our limbs and lay our head 
Upon our own delightful bed — 

just as I was so doing and so musing there was a rap at 
my back door. 1 went to the window, and, opening it 
about an inch, a colloquy ensued, which, according to the 
best recollection and belief of the party in the night- 
gown, was in the words following, to wit : 

“ Who’s there ?” 

“ It’s me, Tim Brason. ” 

“ What do you want 2” 

66 Want a warrant.” 

u Who for ?” 

“ Patsy Brien.” 

“ What’s he done ?” 

“ He owes me a little bill, he does.” 

“ What’s he done V ’ 

u He owes me a little bill, and he ain’t after paying 
me the pay-day.” 

“ What’s he done , I say ?” 


108 


TEK YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


“ He' ain’t paid the little bill.” 

(C I don’t ask you wliat he hasn’t done, but what he 
has done.” 

ce An’ sure, 1 thought yer Honor ’d want to know it ef 
he hadn’t paid it.” 

‘ ‘ Did you expect to get a warrant for that ?’ ’ 

u Indade I did, yer Honor.” 

u Where you from ?” 

“ Sprigton.” 

“ Did you come way from Sprigton down to Trelaw- 
ney, on this business ?” 

“ Indade I did, yer Honor.” 

“ Mr. Brason, your wisest course will be to return to 
Sprigton immediately, and come to Trelawney to-mor- 
row, if you have any business before the court.” 

Window closed with a snap. And Mr. Brason did 
come to Trelawney this morning, and occupied the mind 
of the court some fifteen minutes before convinced, if 
convinced he was in the end, that if he had any little 
bills against Patsy Brien and would sue them, there were 
lawyers enough who would attend to the case if they 
could see any money in it. 

April 23 d. A young man from the Granite State, 
who had been tarrying in Powhatan for several days, 
more or less inebriated all the time, was la^t night taken 
in a bad state of intoxication, and was up this morning 
therefor. He pleaded guilty, confessed shame, and 
implored mercy ; said he had a wife and two children at 
home ; that he was an agent to sell territory for a 
clothes-wringer ; that this business brought him into 
town ; that on his arrival, not feeling well, he took a 
little ; that so doing he went from bad to worse, till he 
was where he was ; that he was without a cent in his 
pocket. A good-looking Yankee, well dressed and with 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOUKHAL. 


109 


an intelligent face, lie was a picture of self -mortification 
and remorse. The usual single-drunk fine was imposed, 
which a barber in whose shop he had loitered paid, and 
he went his way. After his departure there was a 
sound that certain parties, of whom the barber was one, 
had been keeping him boozy, the better to wring out 
of him a good clothes- wringer contract. Hence the 
barber’s benevolence. 

April 25th. A rough Rhode Islander of the Pascoag 
type came boldly into this Commonwealth yesterday and 
invaded the sanctity of Sabbath by a public exhibition of 
an over-indulgence in the mocker. Freely he confessed 
the deed and cordially he paid the penalty, one dollar, 
and on retiring with the officer from court he as liberally 
complimented the Commonwealth, observing that he 
came within its freedom -living borders advisedly, as he 
could be drunk several dollars cheaper here than in 
Rhode Island, and his own was a cheap State to be drunk 
in too. This sounds like old-sinner talk, and so it was. 
It came from an incorrigible who has been twice in State 
prison, and whose offences below felony are docketed in 
sundry courts. One of his last irregularities was to 
knock down a policeman. Arrested for this after a 
while, he wa* being conducted to the calaboose when he 
suggested to the officer in charge that his horse’s shoe 
was certainly loose. A halt was made for inspection, 
and when officer and prisoner were fairly engaged in it, 
prisoner hopped into carriage and was speedily out of 
sight. Recaptured, after various adventures by various 
officers, he was tried, fined, and was paid off by his 
father. The latter, who died a few years ago, was a 
noted “ horseman,” whose jockeying in high breeds may 
or may not have imbred his son with fastness. 

April 2 Uh. A complaint received for an offence 


110 


TEtf YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


which, if the evidence should prove it, will take rank as 
one of the most astounding in the annals of crimes— a 
man fifty odd years old charged with attempting to rape 
his wife’s sister, his wife actively assisting him in the 
nefarious attempt ! It remains to be seen whether this 
crime has been committed in New” England. 

April 27th. Besides disclosing that one man was 
yesterday inebriated in Sprigton, the day disclosed a, 
cunning device of Prussian peddlers peddling dry-goods 
in Powhatan. With packs large enough to load a 
mule, they were brought into court by the officer who 
looks upon all packs with suspicion. Along with them 
was brought a witness, also a Prussian peddler. The 
testimony was documentary. The peddler witness had a 
license, No. 163, in due form issued by the Secretary of 
State, and the two peddler defendants had each a certifi- 
cate from the same Secretary, saying that the same 
license, No. 163, was reported lost ; and on these certifi- 
cates these Prussian peddlers were and had been plying 
their business, and the three all living in the same block 
in a neighboring city. One Prussian said he picked his 
certificate up in his house, that he did not blow how it 
came there, and did not know what it was, and the other 
did not want to say much on the sub ject because he could 
not speak English much. The Prussian who had the 
license that was “ lost” was a glib talker and deftly 
cleared his skirts as particeps criminis. \ He had not 
lost his license ; he had always carried it, ; he had never 
showed it to his co-Prussians or told then the number 
of it, and how they should have a certificate certifying 
to the loss of it was beyond his Prussian ben. 

April 28th. A single case of simple drunkenness, 
followed by the arraignment of the man charged with 
the monstrous offence afore-mentioned. Ltwyers on both 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


Ill 


sides debated the matter of continuance, from which it 
was apparent that the hearing is likely to be long and 
the disclosures fearful. Only too glad to continue the 
case that defence might not fail through want of time. 

April 29 th. Caseless. 

April 30 th. Entries, and appearances, and continu- 
ances, and allowances conditioned upon contingencies, 
to which may be added the answering of many questions 
put by sued persons who come to court without counsel 
and without appearing to dream that the court cannot be 
at the same time their judge and attorney. The poor 
innocents — some are just so innocent — seeing the magis- 
trate’s name at the bottom of the writ, persist in think- 
ing that he was full of wrath and summoned them to 
answer to him , and they are amazed when he tells them 
lie knows nothing about their case, and when he further 
tells them that they will probably have to fee a lawyer 
to enable them to answer to somebody who does know 
about it, they are horrified and out of all manner of 
patience with their country. 

This is one of the trials of the police judge. It is his 
hard fate to be continually teaching ignorance, and so 
far is he from getting thanks for it, that he is cruelly sus- 
pected of trying to impose upon honest people by being 
in league with a class of people traditionally presumed 
dishonest — the lawyers. I may as well record here as 
anywhere else my protest against the popular idea, 
which takes form so often in jest and not seldom in 
speech more serious, that lawyers as a class are inclined 
to dishonesty or otherwise inclined to delinquency more 
than any other class. Truth is, that lawyers are as 
upright, trustworthy, and conscientious as any other set 
of people on the face of the globe. Moralists resort to 
penitentiary statistics when they would make a point 


112 


TE^ YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


against any particular class of people. The statistical 
collocation is not at hand, but it may be ventured that 
the percentage of lawyers to be found in penitentiaries 
is less than that of any other profession, and less than 
that of any corresponding number of persons the world 
over. Lawyers do right for policy’s sake if for nothing 
more, because they see so much more clearly what policy 
demands. 1ST o man better than the lawyer knows that 
honesty is the best policy, and no man is more likely to 
observe it. Rascals among lawyers are found, but it is 
due to simple truth to say that no profession is less 
spotted. The instances are rare in which counsel are not 
more honorable than their clients, and clients represent 
the world’s people of every name and condition. 

May 2d. An odd case of assault and battery. An old 
American citizen of familiar local name, of raven black 
eye and powerful physique, the defendant ; an old 
American citizen also, noted for the kindness of his 
heart, the injured man ; and thus it happened : In the 
cold of night before last (cold as a May day), about nine 
o’clock, near the travelled part of the road just out of 
the village of Feltville, the defendant lay asleep. Two 
men in a carriage came along, and, seeing the sleeper, 
halted, got out, and said get up. No response. They 
punched him, and, without rising, he kicked and roared 
■with such vehemence as scared the two travellers, and 
they travelled on. But not to do a good turn they called 
at the next house, which was the house of the above- 
mentioned kind-hearted man, and him told that there 
was a man near his house asleep upon the road, and then 
went their way. The kind-hearted man went out alone 
and saluted the sleeper. No response. He stooped to 
take hold of him, and did, when suddenly the latter 
arose, seized the Samaritan by t]ie throat, threw him 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOUHNAL. 


113 


down, and, furiously pounding him, blackened his eye, 
bruised his forehead, and dislocated his shoulder. 
Managing to get away, the disabled man went to the 
doctor, who worked over an hour to snap the shoulder 
into joint. The defendant, after hearing the above story 
from the fellow-creature who had sought to be his 
benefactor, said he could not contradict it ; that it might 
be all true, and probably was ; that he was drunk 
that night, and wandered about and knew not what he 
did. This man has led a strange life for years. It is 
commonly believed that he killed his own father. His 
mother, it is said, so believed to the day of her death, 
and stated such to be her belief at the drawing of her 
will. Of late he has lived in a hut in the woods, 
dickering and chopping wood somewhat, and holding 
carnival with boon companions of both sexes. House of 
Correction for three months. 

May 3 d. A bright, serene May day, the air soft, the 
sky all azure, the trees all beginning to burst, and the 
placid surface of the judicial mind unvexed by the prow 
of a solitary case. 

May Ath. Ditto. 

May 5th. Ditto. Three days without a case and with- 
out an overture for one, which is liintful of the millen- 
nium as a possibility. It is a longer halt of the criminal 
column in this district than before known in near nine 
years. What I know of the business of the three trial jus- 
tices, ere this court superseded those officials, leads me to 
think it a longer halt than before known in near fifteen 
years. What may be the explanation of this unusual 
arms-grounding by the law-breakers ? Are they simply 
spitting on their hands for a fresh take-hold, or would 
they beat their peace-piercing spears into pruning 
hooks ? Is it because of the good times that Satan finds 


114 


TEH YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


no mischief for idle hands to do, or is it that mischief is 
at work still as ever and merely three days have elapsed 
without any revelation of it ? One town, heretofore 
prolific of cases, celebrated May-day by denying liquor 
licenses instead of granting a dozen a year ago. Does 
this explain anything ? But another town grants a dozen 
and a half as it has done before. Yet in three days no 
case from that quarter. What means the quiet ? 

May Oth. Exhausted the forenoon in the trial of the 
rape case. Counsel on both sides ; witnesses, all told, 
thirteen ; spectators enough and to spare. The evidence 
disclosed, in the neighborhood of the alleged crime, a 
state of morals sufficiently lax— divulged, in fact, a loose- 
ness of life such as we sometimes defame the lower 
animals by calling beastly. The facts were abundant 
for animadversion, speaking as a preacher ; but speaking 
as a court, I cut the matter short, and felt especial relief 
in an ability to discharge the defendant without any 
qualms of conscience. 

May ^Ith. No case, but weak eyes enough. Yester- 
day’s air in court is what ails them. 

May 9th. Writ entries and the routine incident 
thereto. No criminal case. 

May 10th. Still none. 

May 1 1th. And still none, an unusual, unprecedented 
dearth ! So long a truce makes it look more as if their 
occupation was gone than that the rogues were spitting 
on their hands. Eight days without the issuance of a 
warrant ! The court that can show this blank, in strik- 
ing contrast with any corresponding interval in a term of 
years, may either boast that it has accomplished some- 
what in the line of reform, or challenge other influences 
to show cause why it should not have judgment in its 
favor. Presumably the court is entitled to the goblet, 


A SECTION OE THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 115 

and until some party appears to contest the matter will 
take the prize and set it upon its mantel-shelf. 

May 12 th. Few assemblies exceed in gaping curiosity 
the crowd that oft attends on the sessions of a police 
court. If the case he one that partakes of the tragic, or 
savors of the lewd, and has been duly advertised by 
rumor, how sure it is to draw a “ house.” If the tragic 
alone, the respectable are less coy in making part of the 
spectators ; if of the lewd, the attraction is too strong to 
restrain always the respectable. In the latter case, one is 
inclined to commiserate the better-dressed and cleaner- 
shaved auditors, whose curiosity has so got the start of 
their judgment. Their shamefacedness contrasts so 
sharply with the unabashed look and bearing of their co- 
occupants of the benches, that a sensation of profound 
pity is sometimes excited in the breast of the observer. 
The sly manner in which they slink to a seat or hang on 
the verges of the throng, the indifference to the proceed- 
ings, which they affect at the most interesting stages 
thereof, and the simulated disgust with which they re- 
tire from the scene at the drop of the curtain, are things 
altogether calculated to awaken in their behalf very 
sympathetic emotions. 

'On the other hand, these tender sentiments are far less 
aroused toward the more familiar habitues of the dingy 
and air-dense court-room. Their equipoise is so mani- 
fest that any bestowal of sympathy upon them would be 
sweetness wasted on desert air. They beg no. pardon, 
and dissemble not the weakness flesh is heir to as they 
stretch necks and auricularly expand. Not they. Still 
less do they disguise appreciation of the exceptional ex- 
cellencies of the entertainment by any away turning of 
the head, any yawn as of somnolency or other token of 
spectatorial inattention. To the credit of their sincerity 


116 


TEK YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


be it spoken, they lean intently forward in the benches, or 
stand tiptoe behind them, put hands to their ears, ex- 
change significant glances, and would now and then cry 
“ Hear,” “ Hear,” and perchance stamp with their boots 
but for the proprieties of the place, which they hold in 
great reverence. In short, the orators are rare who can 
keep an audience so attent as a smutty case in court. 

What does all this argue ? that mankind are more 
attracted to exhibitions of the tragical and the low than 
to things intellectual and higher ? It is at least so with 
a part of the genus homo, and that not a small part. If 
it be considered how much larger a portion than do 
would give willing audience to what is merely bloody 
and sensuous, if not restrained by a sense of shame, we 
are driven to the conclusion that the noble in man is not 
so dominant over the base as not to afford a wide field 
for the preacher in the best of communities. 

Many instances I recall of men who could well enough 
have attended, staying away from a lewd case in court 
and afterward seeking information as to all the particu- 
lars, both as relating to the case and the crowd in attend- 
ance. When such men have sometimes been asked, 
“ Why didn’t you come in and hear the case ?” the re- 
ply has been, “ Oh, well, I thought I wouldn’t be seen 
there, but would like to know simply how T it came out — ’ ’ 
words to that effect. That is to say, “ I was ashamed 
to be in the crowd, but am not ashamed to inquire what 
the crowd there heard.” Is it not easier to respect the 
crowd than the persons who are thus too respectable to 
be of it ? 

May 13 th. The court still fasting — criminally. 

May 1 Mh. Fasting still. 

May 1 §th. A case ! which the court very quickly, if 
not ravenously, after its long fast, devoured — disposed of. 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 117 

A very refreshing case, too, it was, independently of its 
arrival after so protracted a season of drought. The 
defendant was a tailor and the embodiment of politeness. 
He stood up erect and said u Guilty,” with a smile and a 
how ; and when he heard the order in such case made and 
provided, he politely stepped forward and cheerfully paid 
the price, and even expressed a lively sense of gratitude 
for the privilege. He then voluntarily and emphatically 
protested that he should never drink and disturb the 
peace again, but dutifully pursue his vocation as a 
journeyman tailor, and religiously husband all his re- 
sources. So saying, he withdrew from the scene, also 
w T ith a polite bow, and with other such manifestations of 
propriety and civility as should make him a model for 
convicts in all time to come. Hereafter let it not be said 
that a tailor is only the ninth part of a man. Here was 
a tailor every inch a man, and it may well be doubted if 
ever I shall look upon his like again. 

If sudden death be good fortune, the man was 
fortunate whose body I held inquest upon to-day. He 
was one of a gang of twelve men repairing a railway 
track near where the road crosses the highway, and at a 
point where the road makes a sharp curve. As the ex- 
press passenger train approached, going at the rate of 
thirty miles an hour, it sounded the usual whistle before 
reaching the crossing. The men all quit their work and 
stepped aside, save this man. Seeing him midway of the 
track still prying with his iron bar at a spike in a sleeper, 
his back to the approaching train, the men shouted, and 
as they shouted, the engine, now in full sight, sounded 
the alarm whistle. He appeared to heed neither the 
shouting nor the whistling (so ran the testimony), ex- 
cept as he turned his head just ere the engine struck, and 
tore, and threw him into fragments along the track. So 


118 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


lie died ! What is singular, all the testimony went to 
show that he was of sound mind, sound body, of good 
habits, and of good repute. He had appeared natural, 
and worked as usual during the morning hours, and his 
act in thus sticking to his work was to his co-workers a 
great mystery. He was an Irishman, thirty-two years 
old, married, and so far as known without relatives in 
the country. Till he began work on the road, a fort- 
night ago, he was a stranger to the gang. Had this man 
for some cause concluded that he would not longer live ? 

May 17th. A young man, a native American, whose 
family connections are of old-stock respectability, pleaded 
guilty to being drunk. The constable found and took 
him in a drunken stew upon the roadside platform of the 
village depot in the broad daylight of Sunday. A 
prominent citizen friend, who accompanied him to court, 
hoped he might be dealt with leniently, because, though 
drunk, he made no noise and disturbed no one. The 
utmost rigor of the law seemed to be lenient enough — 
one dollar. 

May 18 th. I have a few apple trees in my yard, and 
have all the spring been trying to get a clear space of 
time to prune them. Rising early this morning, and 
taking a ladder and the saw my boy had for a Christmas 
present, I started for the first tree and began horti- 
cultural labors. I had ascended well into the upper 
branches of the tree, and was indulging in the hopes of a 
considerable achievement before breakfast, when a 
woman appeared upon the scene. 

u I thought I’d catch your Honor before you went 
out for the day,” blandly said this trespasser on my 
premises. 

“ You’ve caught me up a tree, and I’m not coming 
down either,” I said, and kept on sawing. 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 119 

u Oh, I can talk to you just as well up there, if your 
sawing don’t dround me, for my voice ain’t very loud, 
somehow.” 

This is what she said, and, though I kept on sawing, 
she kept on talking till I came down out of the tree and 
pointed in the direction of the court-house and intimated 
the hour of nine o’clock. Later in the day it turned 
out that her goat, which she hitched and pastured on the 
side of the road, some harum-scarum fellow, she guessed, 
but did not certainly know, had at some time or other 
unhitched and turned at large, and, as she thought, had 
milked a little. This it is to be judge and have a few 
apple trees. u Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would 
melt !” 

May 19th. A stout Indian squaw in court, say fifty 
years old. An indescribable battle Officer A had with 
her last night. With just sufficient whiskey aboard she 
boarded a train yesterday p.m., bound for Providence, and 
took seat in the smoking-car with her basket and other 
duds, and kept up an uproar. In due time the courteous 
conductor came along and signified a willingness to take 
her fare. Refused. He entreated. Refused with an 
explosion of unheard-of expletives. Wampum she had, 
and wampum she showed, but wampum she would not 
give. Fare demanded. Up rose then this remnant of 
the race that is withering away, and tore, and stamped, 
and pounded, and fiercely looked as craving conductor’s 
scalp. Train arrives at Powhatan, and Officer A, there 
found, is called in. Thereupon began a contest which 
appears to have excited and amused the Powhatan ites as 
rarely they have been excited and amused before. 
Squaw would not be taken, but being taken out of the 
car (took three men to take her), she would not go 
whither she was invited. Hot an inch would she budge, 


120 


TEN" YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


but lav down on the platform and thrashed and kicked, 
and meantime raised the war-whoop very like what Pow- 
hatan, doubtless, oft heard in the days of King Philip. 
After a great struggle, during which gathers a great crowd, 
squaw is handcuffed and loaded into an express wagon. 
Two men manage to keep her in, while a third drives on 
to the lock-up, followed by the concourse, and to the 
tune of the war-whoop sounding louder and louder as the 
procession moves. She is incarcerated. The throng is 
dispersing. Out rushes squaw, brandishing the lock 
which she has wrenched from lock-up door, and hurls it 
savagely at the officer. Another conflict, another capt- 
ure, and a second incarceration, but no cessation of the 
war-whoop, which, report saith, was sounded till the bells 
rang nine, and then died away because, no doubt, the 
whiskey had ceased to inspire. 

Morose and silent she came into court. No name 
would she give the officer, and the court entered upon 
the inquiry. 

44 What is your name ?” 

44 No name.” 

44 But yes, you have a name. What is it ?” 

Shakes her head. 

44 Your name, tell me your name.” 

44 Maduese.” 

44 That your first name ?” 

44 No fus name.” 

44 Then your only name is Maduese ?” 

44 Maduese.” 

44 Isn’t it Ann, Mary, or Julia Maduese ?” 

44 Them Irish names — Maduese.” 

44 You married ?” 

44 Y'ees.” 

44 Wliat’s your husband’s name ?” 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


121 


“ Peter.” 

“ Isn’t that an Irish name ?” 

Shakes her head. 

“ Where is he ?” 

“ Run off.” 

“ Have you children ?” 

“ Yees.” 

££ How many ?” 

“ Seex.” 

££ Grown up ?” 

“Yees.” 

“ Where are they ?” 

“ Don’ know — all round.” 

“ Where do you live ?” 

“ Don’ know — Bosson sometime.” 

She is impleaded by the name of Mad Duese and 
charged with evading car-fare. The evidence is heard, 
and Mad Duese is, perforce, found guilty, albeit the 
court’s impulse was to discharge her, guilty or not, for 
something there was in the defiance of this relic of an 
expiring race, in as well as out of the car that whirled 
over these grounds where once “ the Indian hunter 
pursued the panting deer,” which seemed like better 
justice than this court was ordained to dispense. How- 
ever, the “ law” was allowed to take its course, and the 
minimum fine in such case, $5, was imposed. 

“ Can you pay it ?” 

££ Ho pay.” 

££ Then you’ll have to go to jail.” 

££ How long ?” 

££ Forty days.” 

££ I go, but I want iny tings.” 

££ Your things will be kept for you.” 

££ I know, I go.” 


122 


TEN- YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


And Mad Duese went, and there went away a numer- 
ous throng of curious men and boys, who had gathered 
to gaze on this one of “ a stricken few who here and 
there remain, but how unlike their bold, untamed, un- 
tamable progenitors ! one of the stricken few who re- 
main a degraded offspring of the Indian of falcon glance 
and lion bearing, crawling upon the soil where he 
walked in majesty, to remind us how miserable is man 
when the foot of the conqueror is on his neck.” 

May 20 th. In the absence of any case below to-day, I 
might, but for contempt, treat of a case that went up 
from this nether region, and which was yesterday 
“heard” in the serener atmosphere of justice. The 
details of the “ hearing” have just been reported to me 
by the officer who had the case in charge. If ever 1 
was in doubt that those fellows up in the branches of the 
upper courts need to come down to the ground and 
browse round in the grass and shrubbery to learn law, I 
am at last thoroughly persuaded that such is their 
necessity. But for spreading upon the pages of this 
journal what might in some contingency of the future 
impair public confidence in the higher tribunals, 1 
would narrate in detail the story of this case, that all 
men might see what stuff the “ high courts” are made of. 

May 21 st. An all-day hearing of two actions tried 
together, involving this question : If an operative assign 
his wages, may the proprietors of the mill deduct from 
his earnings his bill for house rent, fuel, etc., furnished 
him by his employes ? The question was discussed with 
great warmth by two good, if not great, lawyers. 
Should think the proprietors may not, but before so say- 
ing will ruminate upon what has been laid down by 
limbs of the law, and essay to eliminate the wheat from 
the chaff. 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOUIINAL. 


123 


May 23 d. Some weak ideas on a strong case of larceny 
to-day, but eyes too weak to write them our. How 
many ideas the world is losing by reason of this infirmity 
of my organs of vision ! 

May Zith. A woman assailed Jere O’Brien with a 
torrent of termagancy, and Jere went to Bridget’s worse 
half and interrogated him as to what he thought of that 
sort of business. The worse half said that the better 
half presumably did right. Whereupon Jere drew off 
and hit Peter in the head, and Peter did not hit back, 
but, as a law-abiding citizen, bore the affront. For this 
cause Jere O’Brien was this day before the court, and 
the record showeth him convict of an assault in and 
upon the body of the said Peter, notwithstanding it was 
the head and not the body of Peter that was hit. Such 
is the consistency of law T . 

May 25 th. A Connecticut peddler presumed to invade 
the sacred soil of this Commonwealth and ply his voca- 
tion of peddling tea without a license. The conse- 
quences of this very considerable crime he might have 
escaped, as do very many who commit the like without 
the treasury of the State at all profiting thereby. But 
not content with peddling tea without a license, this 
wooden-nutmeg peddler audaciously, flagitiously, and 
unceremoniously presumed to peddle without a license 
what no man ought ever expect so to peddle with im- 
punity. He entered the dwelling of a young married 
couple, to whom was born but a few months ago a babe. 
The father of the hopeful offspring was absent, dutifully 
engrossed in his occupation of barber. But the mother 
was there, and the babe was, and it (the babe), this 
Connecticut peddler, when he found the mother did not 
take to his tea, straightway began to fondle and admire, 
saying that he was ever so fond of children, and was one 


124 


TE1ST YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


of those unfortunate men who had never himself had 
one. Though he had married two wives and was getting 
along in years, yet was he childless and unhappy, and he 
kissed the baby. And from kissing the baby he 
digressed to remarking sweet things to and patting the 
mamma, and simultaneously with the last act he 
implanted an unlicensed kiss upon the young matron’s 
cheek. Then there was hurrying to and fro, and then 
was the peddling of tea destined to exposure in the 
greater exposure of peddling what this Commonwealth 
never did, and, it is to be hoped, never will license — 
hisses ! Kisses, be it known, are a contraband com- 
modity unless coupled with the all-essential condition of 
reciprocal tender passion. The evidence failed to show 
the reciprocity, and, accordingly, the kiss, however inno- 
cently inflicted, was adjudged assault. The peddler of 
tea was also held to be an unlawful peddler thereof, and 
the entry of the wooden nutmegian into the dwelling of 
the aforenamed young married couple entailed upon him 
altogether an expense of $35.80, and but for being the 
simple booby he seemed to be, his display of sudden 
love should have proved a more costly enterprise. 

May 26th. ££ Drunk — guilty or not guilty ?” 

“Not guilty, but 1 suppose I might as well say I 
was. ’ ’ 

“ Was what ?” 

££ Was drunk.” 

££ Pray, do not say so, unless yon were.” 

££ I guess it’s the cheapest way out of it.” 

££ Out of what ?” 

££ The scrape.” 

££ What scrape ?” 

££ Why, they’ve got me in here.” 

££ What for ?” 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOUKNAL. 


125 


“ They say I was drunk.’ ’ 

“ What do you say ?” 

“ I guess they’re not far from right.” 

61 Dollar and costs.” 

May 27th. Some weak ideas again, hut weaker eyes. 

May 28 th. An old man fined $10 for giving his second 
wife a black-and-blue face. Second wives are not apt to 
fare so. 

May 30 th. A youth mulcted lightly for the larceny of 
a few grapes believed to have been sour. 

May 31 st. A young man celebrated the independence 
of his twenty-first birthday by getting indescribably 
drunk on cider, and fearfully disturbing the peace of a 
little mill village. His employer, the mill-owner, who 
is always touchingly averse to invoking the aid of law, 
civil or criminal, was constrained in pure defence of 
neighborhood decency to send for a constable and have 
the boisterous boy locked up. Both employer and em- 
ploye appeared in court to-day, and both seemed a good 
deal mortified — the young mill operative that he should 
have been so foolish on his twenty- first anniversary, and 
the old mill-owner that he should have to “ stir up” a 
prosecution as a consequence. The boy said he was 
sorry and would drink no more, and the boss said he was 
indignant, and paid his fine. 

The difference between people in their feelings toward 
law is doubtless as marked as any other of all the human 
differences. Some neither care nor want to keep out of 
law ; others are so afraid they shall get into it that they 
ward off a lawyer with a ten- foot pole, and even feel it 
dangerous to have in their house a law-book, say that 
one, “ Every Man Iiis Own Lawyer.” If they knew 
how apt that mischievous volume was to get them into 
law, they would shun it more than the mischievous 


126 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


lawyer who wrote it. When a law-loathing man, in the 
course of human affairs, comes to court, he deems it 
necessary, as he crosses the threshold, to say, “ 1 know 
nothing about courts and hoped I never should.” This 
is the ordinary speech of the ordinary law-loatlier, and 
he seems to think it is the evidence, on his part, of some 
special virtue. Of course, if it proves anything, it 
proves that he is a fool. Almost invariably men of this 
stamp, if they have a suit, as sooner or later they gen- 
erally do (so the fates ordain), lose it, while if they get 
sued, as sooner or later they get, they get shockingly 
beaten. Then, to be sure, they curse law louder than 
ever. Had they taken pains to know a little more 
about law and courts and lawyers they might not have 
sued — might have won. Ho better way to steer clear of 
litigation than to understand litigation. These men who 
“ know nothing about law” make, as a rule, abominable 
witnesses, and when they happen to be clients are a 
pretty scaly set. The man who “ knows nothing about 
law and don’t want to” is, besides being a blockhead, 
one of the mean specimens of earth. 

June 1st. A Frenchman named for the great Napo- 
leon, who yesterday found his Waterloo in Wellington 
wine or Blucher beer, was ordered to pay tribute in the 
sum of one dollar, and in default thereof to be exiled to 
the St. Helena of the county. The vanquished pre- 
ferred tribute to exile, and is again at large to meditate, 
it may be, other campaigns of a top-heavy ambition. 

An Irishman, who also bears an illustrious name, was 
arraigned for roughly handling a fellow-countryman of 
very humble cognomen, and there was entertained, after 
due hearing, a reasonable doubt whether he did it. 
Whereupon he went joyfully out of court, followed 
by many joyful companions, most of whom had been 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


127 


devoted and veracious (?) witnesses for him. Presently 
the devoted came back and would he pleased to be paid 
their fees. Gravely they were advised that the Com- 
monwealth pays only such witnesses as serve to convict a 
man of violating her laws, not such as serve to prove that 
a man has been a law-abiding citizen. The uneducated 
youth could not quite understand why the Common- 
wealth should make this nice distinction, and, to tell 
truth, it is rather hard for the educated to understand. 
On the surface it would seem that the State should feel 
the more generous when it turns out that a subject, in- 
stead of being rebellious, has been loyal. 

June %d. A disturber of the peace confessed to the 
disturbance he would not have made but for the grog he 
drank, and paid the tine that would not have been im- 
posed but for the grog. 

June 3d. This morning, as I was rising with the lark, 
the front-door bell rang. Peeping out at the curtain 
side, 1 saw a man with a folded paper in his hand, and 
immediately the bell rang again. Opening the window, 
I said, “ Anything in particular?” The man bran- 
dished the folded paper and exclaimed, “ A trustee !” 
“What of it?” I said. “Why, I am trusteed!” 
shouted the caller. Not being able to see him well in 
the gray of the morning, but supposing him out of his 
mind, I said I would be down in a moment, and in a 
moment or two I was. Going to the door I beheld a 
middle-aged man, well dressed and otherwise respectable 
in appearance, and having upon his face all the usual 
marks of a common-school education. No sooner had I 
opened the door and got this impression than my morn- 
ing caller, who had thus risen with the lark, again said 
energetically, “ Yes, I am trusteed.” “ Yery well,” I 
replied, “ but I know nothing about it.” “ But your 


128 


TEN TEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


name is on the writ,” lie said, and he showed it to me, 
pointing straight at it. “ That’s very true,” I rejoined, 
“ but 1 know nothing about it.” Oh, the look that that 
man gave the individual who pens this tale ! 

Of course, nothing would answer but to spend a half 
hour’s time in teaching this gentleman of common-school 
education one of the rudimentary lessons in law. Thus 
is this court, in extra-judicial manner, continually im- 
parting information to the benighted without compensa- 
tion — without even thanks, for this “ intelligent” gentle- 
man went away looking as if he should say, “ If there 
isn’t some monkery in all that, 1 am no judge.” 

June 4 ih. A civil day. Entries, defaults, judgments, 
continuances, and appeals. A civil day. Why should 
we not speak of civil justice as well as criminal justice ? 
Tom Paine picks up E. Burke for using the latter — 
criminal justice ; what is that but justice that is crimi- 
nal ? Civil justice, or justice that is civil, would be 
better. One would be smiled at if he should speak in 
court of civil justice, but he may talk of criminal justice 
as much as he pleases. ’Tis all in use. 

June §th. Three complaints received. No one tried. 
At least one of the three accused has decamped, not 
soon, if ever, to be heard of again in these parts. This 
is the way about one case in thirty ends — that is, taking 
this court’s docket as the rule, there will be about one 
warrant in every thirty issued upon which no arrest is 
ever made. In some few instances the warrant is not 
served, because it is not deemed advisable to serve it ; 
in the others because the offender has fled to parts un- 
known, or left the neighborhood so far behind as to 
render it an unwise thing to incur the expense of pursu- 
ing him ; but it is wise enough to keep the warrant alive 
to keep the rogue scared away. It sometimes happens 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


129 


that rogues are thus kept seared away long after the evi- 
dence has vanished that would convict them. Warrants 
in such case may be denominated scarecrows. Of some- 
thing over one hundred unserved warrants of this court 
1 esteem about a dozen good scarecrows still. Rogues 
are very like crows. As the image of a man, though a 
very poor one, keeps the crow from pulling up corn, so 
the fact of a warrant, though there be no gun of evi- 
dence behind it, keeps the rogue aloof from the cornfield 
of his offence. “ The thief doth fear each bush to be an 
officer. ” 

June 7th. A gray-haired man appeared early in court, 
and immediately presented me with two silver half 
dollars. 

“ What’s that for ?” 

“ God forbid,” said he, “ that 1 should deny that I 
was over the bay when I was. That’s the price, isn’t 
it ?” 

“ But how do 1 know you were over the bay ?” 

“ I tell you I was.” 

“ But 1 must know it judicially.” 

“ Oh now ! the sheriff told me to be here at nine 
o’clock, and it would be one dollar, and there it is.” 

“ My dear sir, before 1 can take the silver you must 
be judicially accused, judicially arraigned, and judicially 
adjudged to have been over the bay.” 

“ And all that rigmarole for one dollar ?” 

“ And all that rigmarole for one dollar. Be pleased 
to be seated and retain the pieces of silver till the com- 
ing of the sheriff. Maybe you will not have to part 
with them.” 

“ Why, that’s just what I came here to do — to part 
with them. Now, why won’t your Honor take them and 
let me be gone ?” 


130 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


And further the parley might have proceeded hut for 
the entry of the “ sheriff,” who joined hands with the 
court and the gray-haired one and made a case of it, and 
the silver was lawfully received into the public treasury. j 
The aged gentleman went off marvelling and muttering ; 
something about rigmarole and red tape. Altogether it ; 
was a pretty good comment on the te dollar drink law,” 
which, by the way, gives away, the 16tli inst., to a stat- ! 
ute more sensible, because more like the one that has ex- 
isted from time immemorial. 

In support of a complaint charging a young farmer 
with liquor-selling, the proof showed that he had on two 
or three occasions sold a quart or two of cider, not of his 
own make, to some French woodchoppers. This vio- 
lates the law, and, perforce, he was held guilty — in legal 
contemplation equally guilty with the rum or whiskey- 
seller who sells never so much. The whiskey-seller for 
the first offence is perhaps never fined over $50, and, as 
this is the least fine that can be imposed in any case, it 
was the least penalty that could attach to the young 
farmer’s act, unless , forsooth, the court saw fit to use its 
discretion and “ place the case on file” upon payment of 
costs. The court saw fit. 

Placing liquor cases on file is what some temperance 
folks do scold about. If they should know all the cir- 
cumstances — say, as I inquired of them in this particular 
case — they might scold less. Had the fifty dollars’ fine 
been ordered to-day, this young man, who has a wife and 
child, and has leased a small farm for the year, and has 
a few tools and a horse and cow not yet fully paid for, 
as his sole property, would in all probability have had to 
go to jail. As he told his story in a frank, honest way, 
no one pretending to gainsay it, it was not easy to see 
liow he could raise the money ; or, if he could have raised 


A SECTION OF THE .JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


131 


it, lie would have been wholly out of pocket, while yet 
he was in his planting time. Was it or was it not right, 
under the circumstances, to file his case ? And if right, 
in his case, why should not the presumption hold good 
that when a case is filed it is rightly filed ? 

Not long ago a sick man was prosecuted before this 
court for liquor-keeping, and the evidence against him 
was sufficiently clear. Against my better judgment 1 
allowed myself to be influenced by a certain pressure of 
public sentiment, the fruit of a recent temperance agita- 
tion. The' man was fined $50, when it was apparent he 
could not pay it, and went to the House of Correction, and 
there, in about three weeks, he died ! This is not the 
humanity of temperance. It is the barbarity of despot- 
ism. If it be said that it was the fault of the judge, 
who allowed himself to be influenced by public senti- 
ment, the answer, of course, is, what do the reformers 
create public sentiment for, except for the very purpose 
of thus influencing judges and others in whose hands is 
the law? To create public sentiment is the chief end 
of the temperance agitation, but I have seen many times 
when it has worked more cruelty than good. Public 
sentiment is often a tyrant. 

June 8 th. In most every neighborhood of our New 
England civilization, and it may be the rule holds to a 
limit still greater, there is some member of the human 
family whose unhappy doom it is to be picked upon by 
evil-minded boys.. Generally the unfortunate is a man , 
poor but respectable, well advanced in years if not 
wholly ripe in wisdom, and, if not of potential virtue, 
well disposed toward all mankind. Him the boys never 
let alone. Him they pester, pick upon, and put entirely 
out of patience. They hoot after him on the streets and 
round the corners. They call him “ Pcrker,” “ Tink- 


132 


TEN YE AltS A POLICE COUKT JUDGE. 


um,” and “ Shoo- Fly.” They pin tags on his back and 
coat tails as he sits peaceably down in the grocery, and 
then whistle, titter, and snicker as he walks homeward 
thus shamefully labelled and disgraced. If he come to 
the village with his wheelbarrow to get a few stores, 
while he is making his humble purchases they tie the 
wheel to the barrow. In snowballing time they skulk 
behind barns and fences and pelt him with snowballs ; 
in green-apple time they green-apple him, and for want 
of snowballs and green apples they will even use gravel 
stones. Never can he come into the village nor go out 
of the village without being teased and tormented, and, 
though everybody knows it is so, nobody ever knows 
who makes it so. The boys were seen cutting up round 
Uncle Peter, but nobody knows their names. The 
snowballs were seen to fly, but nobody knows who 
threw them. The tags were pinned on, but grocer Jen- 
kins, and his clerk Ned, and all the loafers of the store 
were so busy just then that they didn’t notice anything. 
Thus the thing goes on from season to season and from 
year to year, till at length Uncle Peter drops into his 
grave and never a rogue has been whipped of justice. 

In painful illustration of this heathenish state of things, 
which so blurs and blots our New England civilization, 
was the evidence to-day in a case of assault and battery. 
The aggrieved party, it scarcely need be told, was a man, 
near or past the ripe age of three-score. Nor need it be 
told that he is a man of a type of character the most in- 
offensive. With no other offence to be brought to his 
door than that he leads a secluded life and drives a some- 
what emaciated horse indifferently attached to an inex- 
pensive vehicle, and is of a religious turn of mind, 
strongly though quietly inclining him to the doctrines 
of the Second x\dventist — with no other offence he has, 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


133 


nevertheless, long been the victim of the machinations 
of evil-minded boys. This the evidence has abundantly 
made apparent. The proof is all-sufficient that this poor 
but pious man has for a long period of time been unable 
to go into the village near where he dwells after a bag of 
meal, a bag of salt, or a bag, bundle, or packet of any- 
thing else without the boys crying out to his horse 
“ Whoa !” without their following him up and pelting 
him more or less with snowballs, stale apples, or peb- 
bles ; without their pursuing him to the very grocery and 
grist-mill and hanging round one or the other of those 
usual places of his destination and there doing some 
piece of mischief or other to him, his animal, or his 
vehicle. Now they have roped his wheels together or 
appended some deformity to his mare’s tail. Again, 
they have detached the mare from the vehicle or de- 
posited in the latter an unseemly something. And when 
overcoming these obstacles he may have started home- 
ward, they would cry out from the by-ways, “ Whoa !” 
and the animal would stop. 

In a late experience of the kind Uncle Jonas, worn 
quite out of patience by such trials of his good nature, 
dismounted from his carriage at a sudden stopping of his 
horse, and sallied into a flock of boys, whipping right 
and left with his whip-stock, and he hit some of them. 
Whereupon an overgrown boy of the flock sallied into 
him, and (so Uncle J. bore witness) threw him down, 
tore off his spectacles, and him otherwise abused. The 
assault and battery was alleged against the big boy, and 
the evidence was considerable on both sides. It should 
go without saying that the sympathy of the court was all 
with Uncle Jonas. It is no discredit to judicature, it is 
confidently believed, to aver that the court at the start 
was prejudiced against the big boy and all the boys who 


134 


TEIT YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


were then and there with him, including as well what- 
ever other boys swore at the trial for him, the big boy 
defendant. But though the court was thus favorably 
biassed, fate, as usual, was on the side of impunity. There 
was so much positive ignorance on the part of those who 
ought to have known something, and so much positive 
swearing on the part of those who ought not to have 
been biassed at all, that it was impossible to find that the 
big boy used more than that degree of reasonable resist- 
ance which the law justifies even in a big boy when as- 
sailed by a whip-stock. It came to pass, therefore, that 
the big boy was discharged, but not till he and boys in 
general had been as roundly scolded as though found 
guilty, and an impressive homily delivered in the inter- 
ests of Uncle Jonas and his tribe wherever scattered and 
dwelling on the face of New England or elsewhere on 
the face of the globe. 

June 9th. A simple assault against a youth who last 
winter burglariously broke and entered his grandmother’s 
dwelling, but was spared a prosecution out of regard to 
maternal feelings. He barely escaped jail to-day by 
raising fine money in the nick of time. But he did not 
go out of court without allusion to the burglary in ter- 
rorem . 

June 11th. An Irish saloon-keeper, once a selectman 
of his town and a politician of activity, was before the 
court for running his saloon without a license, and sent to 
the House of Correction for three months. A pitiable 
object he was to behold — bloated near to blindness and 
on the very verge of delirium tremens. The tremens he 
has several times had, and the complaint against him was 
at length made at the instance of his friends, including 
his wife, who saw that he would soon die unless removed 
from his rum. 


A SECTION - OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


135 


This man ran his saloon all last year openly, defiantly, 
without a license, and had so run it this year up to this 
day. The hands of the town authorities were kept off 
from him by political influence, and other officers let 
him alone for the same cause. The prosecution to-day 
was made, not out of any respect for law, but to defend 
the man’s life from the same rum which he had been 
permitted for a year and a half to sell unlawfully to 
others. 

June V&th. A simple drunk. This, in popular phrase, 
is what a single, individual act of drunkenness is styled 
when it becomes a case in court. We read in the papers 
of so many “ simple drunks” in such and such courts, 
by which is meant that the parties were simply drunk — 
only that and nothing more. In contradistinction to 
being simply drunk is the case of a man who was drunk 
and something more. Such an offender is the common 
drunkard. His offence is complex. He has lapped in- 
dulgence on indulgence till his inebriety is void of that 
simplicity which the law hath of late seemed so much to 
favor and admire as to tax it simply a dollar — only that 
and nothing more. But the simplicity of the law has 
tended not a little to the complexity of drunkenness. 

June 14 th. “ In thoughts from the visions of the 
night, when deep sleep falletli upon men, fear came upon 
me and trembling, which made all my bones to shake,” 
for 1 was awakened by Mrs. Wiglittle plucking at my 
arm and saying, “ Mr. Wiglittle, Mr. Wiglittle, get up, 
I hear somebody.” “ Who ? Where?” “ I hear 
them around the house,’ ’ she said. 1 arose. Stepping 
softly to the window I beheld the forms of two men. 
Ketracing my steps, I grasped the hickory cane which, for 
a precaution, I keep at the head of our bed, and de- 
scended to the lower floor to await the onslaught, which 


136 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


I could but believe was about to be made. Presently 
there was a confused groping and mumbling at the door- 
way. “ What’s wanted, you villains ?” 1 cried. “ Want 
th-th-g-ge-geege, ” was the response. u What you want 
him for?’ 5 I demanded. “ Want a-a wr-writ,” fum- 
bling at the door, somebody said. “ Out upon you ! 
This is no time for writs,” 1 said, firmly. “ All r-r-right, 
jes 1 as you say,” said one of them, and they seemed to 
retreat. Waiting till assured of their departure from 
the yard, which it took them a long time to make, such 
was their difficulty in finding the gateway, 1 returned to 
my bedchamber, where 1 found Mrs. Wiglittle much 
recovered from her agitation ; for no sooner had she 
heard the word u writ” than she knew it was innocence 
abroad, and that her half dozen silver teaspoons were 
safe for the rest of the night. 

June 15 th. One A. B. was before the court, com- 
plained of by his wife as a common drunkard. On mo- 
tion of liis counsel the case was continued. This man 
stands upon the records of the court as follows : 


1873. 

Aug. 2. Drunk. Paid fine, $2, and costs, $6.45 $8.45 

1874. 

Mar. 7. Drank. Case filed on payment of costs 4.55 

July 6. “ Paid fine, $3, and costs, $6.12 9.12 

Sept. 11. “ Charged as 2d offence. Paid fine, $10, 

and costs, $6.10 16.10 


1875. 

Apr. 13. Drunk. Charged as 2d offence. Committed for non- 
payment of fine, etc. 

June 10. Disturbing peace. House Correction, 3 months. 

1877. 

Jan. 15. Drunk. Paid fine, $5, and costs, $5.45 10.45 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


137 


1878. 

Feb. 15. Drunk. Paid fine, $3, and costs, $4.45 $7.45 

“ 16. “ 2d offence. Paid fine, $5, and costs, $6.55.. 11.55 

July 5. Assault. Paid fine, $5, and costs, $4.95 9.95 

Aug. 26. Mayhem (biting off man’s finger). Bound over. 

1880 . 

May 17. Common drunkard. Paid fine, $3, and costs, $6.05... 9.05 

Oct. 1. Drunk (new law). Paid fine, $1, without costs 1.00 

" 4. “ “ “ “ “ $1, « “ 1.00 

Nov. 19. “ 3d offence. House Correction 6 months. 


For the finger-biting the jury found him guilty of 
assault only. For this he was sentenced to the House of 
Correction six months, which term he served. Of his 
last six months’ term he served four months, being par- 
doned out on petition, to which 1 was induced to give a 
quasi indorsement. Total imprisonment, fourteen months 
and some days. Total amount of fines and costs paid, 
$88.67. Within a week after his pardon he was drunk 
and abusing his family, and he has been on his bouts 
pretty well ever since. 

He is an Irishman who owns a place worth a couple 
thousand dollars, and, besides some younger children who 
work in the mill, has a son married and in good business. 
None of his children, it is said, drink. So clever a 
fellow is he when sober, so capable and altogether ad- 
mirable, that his friends stick to him and will not quite 
give him up. When drunk he is fury incarnate, and 
superadds a muscle commensurate with his diabolism. 
Yet is he unfortunate rather than bad. Prosecution does 
not appear to better him. What will ? The pledge he 
has several times taken on leaving the court, going to the 
priest for that purpose. When convicted as a common 
drunkard in May, 1880, he w T as let ofi easy on condition 
that he take the pledge. This he did, and was reported 
as keeping it several months. He is alw r ays very peni- 


138 


TEK YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


tent on coming to liis senses, and in the hour of trial full 
of resolution. Only once has he pleaded not guilty, and 
that was to the mayhem charge, and of that offence he 
proved to be not guilty. Too honest to deny his guilt, 
his only fault seems to be that he is too weak to deny his 
appetite. Unfortunate rather than bad ! 

June 17th. A New Jersey man, arraigned for stealing 
a pair of pants, said it must be that he did it, as the 
pants were found upon his person and were not his, but 
he did not know where or when he put them on. He 
was drunk and very oblivious of everything for several 
hours prior to his arrest. He was a mechanic, and 
worked in a car-shop, Newark, N. J., where, the estab- 
lishment being burnt out, he obtained from the super- 
visor a “ pass,” and was on his way to Boston to get 
work. Getting off at a station in this vicinity, he worked 
fora day and earned a dollar. With this he went a- 
drinking yesterday, and why he should steal a pair of 
pants he knew not, for he had a decent pair enough 
without. All which was told in such a way as to make 
it seem quite true. He was a thirty- eight-year-old 
man, so he said, decently clad, and wore a very honest 
look. 

Other evidence showed that in a boozy, staggering 
state he entered a boarding-house in mid-afternoon, went 
up-stairs to a bedroom, put the pants in question on 
over his own, and then went out and toward the depot. 
Thither he was followed, and some one, recognizing the 
trousers, sent for the owner, who came and demanded 
his goods and chattels. A surrender was cheerfully 
made and an arrest as cheerfully submitted to. The 
performance seemed rather unfelonious, but it so made 
up in impudence what it lacked in iniquity that it was 
difficult not to hold that defendant was “ substantially 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


139 


guilty.” Unable to pay a moderate fine, he went where 
the non-fine-payers go. 

Suppose this Jerseyman’s story to have been all true 
— that he went into that house, put on those pants, and 
wore them oft' entirely unconscious of what he was 
doing. Was not the purpose of that particular act or 
some other larceny in his mind before he became too 
tipsy to reason about it ? Would he have done it had lie 
not conceived an idea of stealing while yet he was sober ? 
Men under the influence of liquor often say bitter and 
irritating things to their friends. Would they do it un- 
less they had entertained in sober moments the feelings 
their angry words express ? In vino veritcis. 

June 18^A. A Frenchman called to account for fisting 
and kicking a fellow pink of politeness. Defendant’s 
defence was that Peter sass’d him. Being told that 
words do not justify blows, he said, “ No matter for tat, 
he sass me, and 1 have goot right to hit him. ” Being 
still told that in the eye of law mere words, however 
seasoned with sauce, are not a sufficient justification for 
blows, he said, “ He Sass me and I hit him — you see ! 
Tat’s it, 1 no take sass from any mans.” The court 
further expounded the law, as it was able, but was un- 
equal to making plain the justice of a fine in view of the 
<c sass.” 

Another Frenchman confessed to fornication, and paid 
a fine without debate. His co-fornicator was one 
Bridget, who had discreetly departed the precinct. 

June ZQth. -Four drunks and the like number of as- 
saults. Of the former was the case of A. B., whose 
court record was last Wednesday outlined. His friends 
appeared in force, and suggested that his family and the 
State might be spared further trouble from him, and, 
perhaps, the man himself be more likely to be saved if 


140 


TEST YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


lie should depart the Commonwealth and stay away there- 
from. This he declared his readiness to do, and his 
friends vouching that, if permitted, he would do it, the 
complaint was placed on file on payment of costs, with 
further condition that he leave the State and not return 
for the space of six months. Neither fine-paying nor 
the House of Correction has served to correct this man. 
The expedient now adopted may or may not. Notts 
mrrons. 

Distinguished from A. B.’s case — a case truly of com- 
plex drunkenness — was case No. 2, familiarly styled a 
“ simple’ ’ drunk — that is, the man was simply found 
in a drunken sleep upon the roadside, where he was in 
imminent danger of being run over in the darkness by 
any passing vehicle. 

In case No. 3 defendant was simply drunk on cider. 
Under the influence of this beverage, in the course of 
three hours last evening (Sunday), he simply assaulted 
four young ladies. Three he rudely seized hold of and 
soundly scared, and the fourth he threw to the ground 
and there held till screams brought help to the rescue. 
Shortly after the last exploit he was arrested on the 
street drunk, but his fame had already preceded him at 
police quarters as an offender of another type. Such a 
fluttering as he had caused among the females was no 
simple thing to do. The girls were all in court, and iden- 
tified him. To the complaint for being drunk was added 
prosecution for the more grievous assault. Housed for 
six months. 

Another young man, besides being drunk, committed 
an evil assault, and was committed for half a year. 
Without the slightest provocation he severely kicked a 
man in the groin. The third and fourth assaults were 
punished by fines. It did not appear that the last two 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


141 


assaults were committed while tlie offenders were visibly 
intoxicated, but their acts were traceable directly to liq- 
uor, the offence in one case being the outgrowth of a bar- 
room wrangle, and in the other an undertaking to lick 
Barney, because Barney in a former row had helped lick 
Tim when Tim was in a drunken squabble with Ned, 
Jack, and Mike, and Tim was a cousin of the defendant. 
In short, the eight cases to-day all flowed immediately 
from the fountain-source of grog, and each case was 
otherwise wholly independent of the rest. 

June %lst. I keep no horse. I seldom ride. I prefer 
to walk. Generally speaking, 1 prefer to foot it. I get 
nearer nature as a pedestrian than 1 should as a chariot- 
eer or an equestrian, and so, as a rule, 1 foot it. In all 
this I and my wife are, to a remarkable degree, one. She 
is a walker, and walks for pleasure as well as from prin- 
ciple. But once in a while she likes to ride. This pret- 
tily appears from one of her pretty stanzas composed for 
the occasion of the fifth anniversary of our humble wed- 
ding. 

“ Nor prancing steeds from cottage side 
Have rolled with us away ; 

But now and then we’ve ta’en a ride 
Upon a summer day.” 

Such being her tastes and temper, she said to me cheer- 
fully this morning, “ Couldn’t we take a little ride this 
afternoon, it is so pleasant ?” 1 replied I guessed so, 

and that 1 would hurry up court business and see if I 
could not bring it pass. So saying, 1 went forth to 
the day’s duties and hurried up, and about four o’clock 
p.m. hurried to the livery stable and, procuring a livery- 
stable team, hurried on a livery-stable trot to my resi- 
dence. Mrs. Wiglittle was ready, as she always is, and 
waiting for me. 1 stepped out of the buggy to help 


142 


TEI* YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


Mrs. W. into it, and as I was doing so, I heard a voice 
saying, “ Judge.” I turned, and the voice said, 
“ Going, are ye ?” “ This looks like it,” 1 as much as 

said. “ That’s what I thought, but I’m glad 1 happened 
to catch ye. Couldn’t you stop to hear about a little 
case?” continued this impertinent voice. “ How small 
a case is it ?” I asked, with one foot on the buggy step. 
“ Well, it ain’t so much of a case as it is a continual 
bother to me,” was the reply. Falling back on some of 
the rights which I felt that even botheration was bound 
to respect, I remarked that those cases which were not 
much of a case were a continual bother to and that 
if the gentleman’s case was only a bother, I thought it 
would keep till I had taken Mrs. Wiglittle to a little 
ride ; and with this remark 1 took a seat beside her, 
changed the subject, and stole an hour away. 

June 22 d. A corpulent old man, who had imbibed 
and imbibed, sought repose on the stone steps of a meat 
market, and slept and snored, and, snoring, arrested 
notice, and was thereupon arrested last night. Accused 
this morn as a bibber, he set up a defence. What ho 
took, he said, he took as medicine, and therefore his 
taking was not “ a voluntary use of intoxicating liquor.” 
Evidence there was that strongly negatived this piece of 
special pleading, and one dollar and costs stared him from 
the judgment-seat in his red face. His cash resources 
equalled the sum minus fifty cents. As security for the 
half dollar he deposited with the court of justice two 
brass checks, purporting to be checks for baggage be- 
longing to him at a depot in a neighboring town. The 
court is not accustomed to take collateral in this way, 
but concluded to do so rather than pack the old codger 
off to jail. The private opinion journalistically expressed 
of this court is that these brass checks are worth just 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 143 

their weight in brass, and that the pawner thereof is an 
old fraud. If the court is right, the Judge of it is be- 
tween forty-nine and fifty cents poorer because this old 
man imbibed. On a former occasion a man whose fine 
and costs amounted to about $16 paid $5 and gave me a 
note for the rest, and never a cent did I get on the 
promissory. At another time I trusted a Gilpin who ran 
away. Other instances could I cite of parties convict 
fleecing me, but it is not a pleasant subject to dwell 
upon. 

June 23 d. A middle-aged Irishman, who has been on 
a fearful drunk for some weeks, fined one dollar and 
committed for non-payment. The law will keep him in 
jail ten days — long enough to get sober. He had over 
$300 in bank on which he has been drawing during his 
spree. He had enough about him within ninety-five 
cents to pay the court bill, and implored for time to get 
the rest, but it was thought best to hurry him where 
rum is not sold. 

June 24 ih . A peculiar case came near to court to-day, 
and may enter it, though the chances are doubtful. An 
Irishman, said to be eighty years old, murderously 
assaulted his sister, said to be seventy-eight years old, 
who was living in the same house with him, the two 
there living alone. The assault was committed the 
evening of June 17th and witnessed by two lads of com- 
petent age to testify, the assailant at the time being 
under liquor to the extent, as he has since said, of two 
glasses of beer and one of lemonade. The w T oman, 
whose hip was broken in the attack, lay for near two or 
three days neglected, wholly uncared for, and is now in 
a precarious state. The house where the deed was done 
is near the village of East Powhatan, and on a well- 
travelled road. 


144 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


Yesterday a justice of the neighborhood, learning the 
circumstances, called an officer, and receiving a com- 
plaint from him, issued a warrant returnable before this 
court, and had the offender arrested. The old man 
wanted to give bail, and being asked who would bail him, 
named a prominent citizen of the village. The justice 
and the officer together went with the prisoner to the 
citizen named, who, to the surprise of those officials, be- 
came surety for the prisoner’s appearance at court this 
morning. Promptly at nine o’clock the prominent 
citizen appeared at court, and with him his bail, whom 
he forthwith surrendered, saying that when he went 
surety he supposed he was doing an act of accommoda- 
tion to Judge Wiglittle and the deputy sheriff, whereas 
it turned out that he was accommodating the prisoner — a 
thing he was by no means disposed to do. It was not 
quite easy to understand this manner of talk, but it is 
about as good as a good deal other talk on law this court 
hears. The explanation was accepted. But no sooner 
was it accepted than it transpired that it had been better 
if the prominent citizen had showed no spirit of accom- 
modation at all ; for between the time of taking bail and 
the appearance at court the bail had taken poison, a 
monstrous dose of Paris green (purposely, so bail said), 
and came into court retching and groaning from the 
effects. Too much distressed to be arraigned, a doctor 
was called, who, upon examination of the man and his 
vomit, was clearly of the opinion that he had been dosing 
with the favorite potato-bug remedy. He was accord- 
ingly taken out of court to the hotel near by, and at last 
accounts was in a more precarious state than the aged 
sister who was prostrated by his brutal assault. 

June 25th. An ejectment suit came to grief by seven 
witnesses failing to make out a prima-facie case for 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


145 


plaintiff, and another action came abruptly to an end by 
discovery that the officer had made no return on the 
writ. If ever plaintiffs get mad, it is when they find 
they have no right whatever to be in court. They are 
vexed enough when, having some sort of a case, they 
get beaten ; but when they have no case at all, lawyers, 
courts, police, and all creation better look out ! 

June tyUh. He drank a quart of cider, then bought a 
bottle of whiskey and drank a “ swig” or two from it, 
and, wandering round, wandered into a house. There 
sat an old lady a-stitch— stitch — stitching, and beside her 
sat her old man, and he is very feeble and blind he is. 
He (the wanderer) wanted a pipe he did, and she told 
him she had no pipes for to sell, but if he only wanted a 
puff or so he could have the old man’s for a turn, and 
she give it him, and not to overburn the matches of the 
house, she took a lighter and stooped to light it by the 
fire, and as she was stooping to do the stranger a 
pleasantry, he caught her very undacently by the person. 
She felt mooch insoolted and chid him, but he said he 
mant no harm, and so she overlooked it and handed him 
the lighter, and then he caught her hand and squazed it 
most undacently indade. Nothing then could she surely 
do but order him to begone, but naver a step would he 
go till he went of his own good accord, and went into the 
back yard and lay down into a slape, and the constable 
came along and took him off, he did, and that’s all I have 
to say. An assault ; $10 and costs — non-paid ; com- 
mitted. 

The venerable Irishman whose case last Friday was so 
abruptly suspended departed the evening of that day 
for appearance before the Supreme Tribunal. This is 
the first instance I have known of a person taken to 
court for trial and dying before the trial could be had or 


146 


TEN - YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


even commenced. According to all accounts, this old man 
was of good fair sense, and was in the possession of his 
ordinary sense when he took the poison. It is rational 
to presume that between the time of furnishing bail on 
Thursday and Friday morning, when he took the fatal 
dose, he thought the matter of his age and situation all 
over, and concluded it was best to end at once “ this fit- 
ful fever” (in his case protracted so long), and go with- 
out any more adieu to the undiscovered country. And 
who, after all, is wise enough to know that this was not 
a wise conclusion ? In due time he called for the priest 
of the parish, and the priest attended and performed the 
usual rites of the sacerdotal office. If his religion be 
true, such were all-effectual for the safe future of the 
man, and what better exit could the old man make from 
a world whose wear and weariness he had borne for four- 
score years ? If his religion be not true, it is altogether 
certain that had he longer lived he would have died in 
the error of it — and what then ? 

June %8th. It is lawful to sell without license beer not 
‘‘containing more than three per cent, of alcohol, by 
volume, at sixty degrees Fahrenheit.” A Frenchman 
was to-day mulcted for vending the article in excess of 
this standard. He appealed. ’Twould seem that he 
knew his beer was above the water line, since he came 
with his sureties, and the appeal was his uppermost 
thought. When asked whether guilty or not, he said, 
“I peel it,” and when asked what he “peeled,” he 
said, ■“ My bail be here good nuff.” The bail proved to 
be real estate. 

Two men expiated their last Sunday’s inebriety by 
paying the extreme penalty known to the law— one 
dollar and costs. They made an offensive exhibition in 
a village while the people were going to church, but 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


147 


their action was not such as to he reached by any known 
law, which makes the “ people” think the law in a poor 
state. 

June %9t7i. A disturber was brought in, the complaint 
against whom was made some three years ago. The day 
after the disturbance (which was not slight) he absconded 
into another State, and there stayed till the noise of his 
offence had died out, and the evidence of it as well. As 
to the death of the evidence he was not quite certain, 
but he had satisfied himself that it was so far gone as to 
scarce talk aloud. Under these circumstances a few days 
ago he approached the officer, through his father, and 
proposed to surrender if he could be let off (on a plea 
of guilty which he would make) with a light fine ; 
further saying that he wanted to come home, go to 
work, let drink alone, and be good. 

The officer lays the matter before the judge. What 
is the judge to do or say ? The offender cannot be got 
into court without an official intimation of leniency be- 
fore he comes. Should this be given ? Without the in- 
timation the accused will, perhaps, stay away from home, 
and to his and his family’s prejudice. Without it, too, 
he may come home, submit to arrest, be brought into 
court, and pleading not guilty, will have to be discharged 
for want of evidence ; so saith the officer. The costs will 
then fall on the State. Should the judge intimate the 
leniency that the State may be spared the costs and 
profit to the extent of the small fine ? Such cases as this 
are every now and then occurring in the upper not less 
than the lower courts, and as often as they occur I guess 
the “ intimation” is given, in the upper courts through 
district-attorneys, and in the lower by the magistrates. 
It is a kind of compounding of crime by the Common- 
wealth itself in the face and eyes of its own statutes 


148 


TE2h YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


against that sort of offending. It is a grave question 
•whether a court, however small, should not so hold up 
its head as not to be a party, however remotely, to this 
species of winking at crime. Nevertheless, it is a wink- 
ing I have not yet found a court so austere but it would, 
upon occasion, practise. So apt is the majesty of 
government itself to look to the main chances in the 
matters of dimes and dollars. 

June 30 th. A French operative, crazed by nefarious 
grog yesterday, made a great commotion in mid-after- 
noon in and about the mill of his employer. What with 
his antics among the spindles, his defiance of his boss, his 
attack upon a scythe-grinder, bv which he cut himself 
and then scattered his blood hither and thither, his rush 
into the counting-room in hurly-burly demand of his pay 
and a simultaneous assault upon the paymaster, etc., 
etc., lie just about succeeded for the hour in suspending 
the business of the establishment. Wholly oblivious ho 
seemed to be this morning of his performance. He 
knew he sent to a gin-vending hole and got a bottleful, 
for which he paid one dollar, and drank. Whether he 
will recall his exploit in the course of three months in 
the House of Correction will depend upon the power of 
a man in sobriety to bring to mind what in his inebriety 
he hath done. 

July 1st. A furious step-parent, enraged with a swain 
of two-and-twenty years who had discovered a tender 
passion for his step-daughter of eighteen summers by 
“ going home” with her sundry times from the Method- 
ist meeting, last eve, as one of said goings home was 
drawing to a pleasant close at the gate of the step- 
daddy’s castle, flew at the object of his wrath, and him 
did so beat and bruise that the lover’s lip (the same that 
but a moment before served him the ecstatic office) 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


149 


puffed out plump witli liis nose, and he was made to feel 
in other respects unhappy, uncomfortable, hurt, and 
shabby. 

A full and impartial inquiry into this act of step- 
parental interference resulted in a belief that it was 
warranted neither on legal grounds nor moral. There 
appeared no earthly reasons, or, if earthly, valid , why 
such objection should be made to John’s attentions to 
Mary. Besides that Mary was willing and of an age to 
elect, John, by all accounts, is a good, steady, industrious 
boy, and withal earns good wages and lays them up, pre- 
sumably moved thereto by the most honorable intentions, 
having reference to a matrimonial future of which Mary 
not less than John is to be magna pars , if permitted. 
Such being the testimony and the probability, it w^as im- 
possible not to entertain kindly sentiments toward John 
and to feel a repugnance amounting to judicial heat and 
aversion for the man who should so seek to obstruct the 
course of true love. 

July 2 d. A tall, manly-looking Rhode Islander w r as 
formally fined for peddling without a license the “ Ris- 
ing Sun Stove Polish.” His face was as radiant as the 
article he peddled. Too honest to tell a fib in court, he 
admitted that he fibbed to the officer first in telling him 
he had a license when he had not, and again in saying he 
thought he had a right to sell the Rising Sun without a 
license, when he well know that this Commonwealth did 
not permit the Rising Sun to be hawked “ from dwelling 
house to dwelling house,” within her borders without 
the hawker being thereunto duly authorized. The fine 
and costs near exhausted the change of the radiant man. 
The court felt it a species of robbery as it took his bits 
of money, and indeed always has so felt in taking a 
peddler’s pence as by the statute constrained. 


150 


TEX YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


Fourth July. Independence. 

The following case of monomania, if such it he, is from 
another section of the journal. 

March 8 th. A woman arraigned and tried on com- 
plaint of an agent of the society with the long name for 
depriving sundry cattle of necessary sustenance. The 
defendant, a widow, some sixty years old, living alone on 
a forty-acre farm in Trelawney, where she has so lived 
since her husband’s death fifteen years ago. She is of 
one of the very old American families, has a not un- 
pleasant face, is of cultivated speech, and, when not 
excited, very ladylike. 

The evidence, coming from eight witnesses, went to 
show that defendant was the owner of some forty acres, 
with decent house and barn thereon, and of a herd 
consisting of one bull, ten cows, and two calves ; that 
she has cultivated but a mere fragment of her land, 
whether for grass, grain, or other produce ; that what 
farm work has been done has been done mostly by her- 
self, except as she has had help a day or two in hay time ; 
that last year she cut not exceeding a ton of hay, and 
gathered not that much till it was quite dry and yellow ; 
that during the past winter she has bought two tons and 
a half of hay and more or less meal ; that her habit has 
been to keep all the cattle she well could, rarely ever 
selling a bull, cow, or calf, and never causing one to be 
[dlled or selling one to be killed ; that she has not in late 
pears kept swine, fowls, or other animals ; that she has 
lot in late years sold any milk, but allowed the calves to 
suck what they would without any attempt to wean 
bem ; that last fall, upon the approach of cold weather, 
ler cattle were in a fair condition from their grazing of 
lie season, but had eaten down the pastures till notice- 
ibly bare ; that during the past winter the cattle had 


A SECTION OF THE JUDGE’S JOURNAL. 


151 


wandered a good deal about the .neighborhood, ap- 
parently sometimes for water and sometimes for what 
they might find to eat ; that they had been growing 
poorer and poorer and had bellowed a good deal day and 
night ; that a visit to the barn a few days prior to the 
complaint discovered the cattle in a famishing state ; two 
or three cows were tied up, others were roaming the 
floor, picking up such sprigs of hay as they might from 
the manure ; the two calves were seeking nourishment 
seemingly from the droppings ; two cows little better 
than skeletons were dead in the stanchions and obviously 
had been for weeks ; two cows that were milk-giving 
had bags not larger than a cocoanut ; manure covered 
the floor, and in places was in heaps ; a few hundred of 
hay was upon the scaffold, a little of which, when thrown 
down, the creatures ravenously devoured. 

The defendant called no witnesses, but testified herself 
at great and wearisome length. It was a strange pro- 
ceeding that she should be thus brought into court. She 
thought as much of her cattle as any man of his. She 
took as good care of them as many men did of theirs, and 
better. She was attached to her cattle, deeply attached 
to them — indeed, loved them. ITad she not a right to 
keep cattle as well as any man ? She did not go to town- 
meeting to vote. She let the men have it their own way 
there. Had she no right upon her own premises which 
men were bound to respect ? It was a cruel thing to 
drag her into court and so interfere with her affairs. 
She cruel to her dumb beasts ! She resented the imputa- 
tion. As for their suffering for want of sustenance, she 
had not always been able to get hay when she wanted it, 
and she feared she had sometimes given them too much 
meal. The two cows that died she took the best care of 
she could, and grieved enough she was when they died. 


152 


TEK YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


They did not die from starvation— far from it — -but from 
being pounded by the boys and her own brother, and 
slipping on the ice, which strained them. u Topsy’ ’ she 
doctored in every way, and really she thought the poor 
creature would get well. She seemed better one night, 
but upon going out in the morning Topsy, poor creature, 
was dead ! (Here the witness showed great emotion, and 
wept.) To the inquiry why she kept so many cows 
without seeking to derive any profit from them, and 
deriving none, she answered, with much warmth, because 
she liked to keep them. Had she not that right ? If 
she found pleasure in it, was it anybody’s business? 
Some liked one kind of animals, some another. She 
liked cows. If she was able to own them, could she not 
keep and enjoy them without interference by her neigh- 
bors ? It was strange, indeed, that she should be so 
pursued. But it was not the first time that she had been 
persecuted. Years ago there was an attempt to put her 
under guardianship. She then had more head of cattle 
than at present, six or seven of the number being bulls. 
Under the pressure that was brought to bear she con- 
sented to sell all the bulls but one, and some of the cows. 
She had always been sorry she consented to it, and never 
would she consent again to parting with any of her 
stock. It was her own, and she would do as she deemed 
best with it. 

Such, in substance, the defendant said in the course of 
a long talk. Two physicians, who had been summoned 
were present during the hearing, and, after the woman 
had been heard, were called upon. One of the doctors 
had known defendant for thirty years, attended her 
husband in his last sickness, but had never attended her 
professionally, because, as she said, she was never sick. 
The other, a younger physician, had never before seen 


WHAT THE PUBLIC EXPECTS OF THE JUDGE. 153 


the woman, and had no acquaintance with her family 
relatives. The doctors were asked whether, in view of 
the testimony concerning the condition of the cattle and 
the barn, and of what they had heard from defendant, they 
would consider her responsible for the cruelty, suppose 
the evidence showed that she had deprived the animals 
in her charge of necessary sustenance ? They both, 
without any qualification, replied in the negative. Con- 
firmed in its opinion by this emphatic opinion of the 
doctors, the court discharged the woman, who thereupon 
made haste for a confidential interview with the Judge. 
In whispering tones she reminded him that the effect of 
his decision was to declare her insane, and that now her 
own folks or the selectmen (some of whom had been 
present) would attempt to put her under a guardian or 
commit her to the asylum. Against such a piece of in- 
justice and cruelty she besought the court’s influence, as 
the only object of such a step on the part of her brother 
or the town would be to deprive her of her cattle and the 
only enjoyment which life could her afford. 


XIII. 

WHAT THE PUBLIC EXPECTS OF THE JUDGE. 

What does the public expect of the Judge ? That he 
be promptly at his place of business and ready to attend 
to it. This, reader, is your answer to the question, is 
it ? Seldom was reader ever more fatally enveloped in 
the fogs and misleading mists of error. The public 


154 


:Eff YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


does not thus expect. Discreet individuals excepted, the 
public does not seriously suspect that the Judge has. any 
definite place of business apart from his house, his barn, 
his apple-tree, the church, the depot, the rail-car, the 
opera, the sidewalk, the middle of the street, or all out- 
doors in general. Nor has it so much as entered the 
public’s mind that the Judge has any regular hours of 
business apart from unearthly hours of the morning, bed- 
time at night, and deep slumbers at midnight, and those 
other hours of the twenty-four sweet to most folk, when 
the opportune interval is supposed to be at hand for the 
reading of the daily paper or the scriptural lesson. 

So much is demonstrable from actual experience and 
the data of a veritable journal written out within a rea- 
sonable time after the event of torment, or otherwise 
engraven upon the memory of the individual w r hose pen 
indites this veracious epitome of history. It maybe that 
other judges have not had the experience, and therefore 
have not written a journal such as is here relied on for 
conclusive proof of the two foregoing propositions. 
That is altogether probable. The reader is to remember 
that this is not the book of any such judge, but the book 
of a judge who was also clerk , and if the reader will bear 
this piece of truth in mind he will have no difficulty 
with anything advanced in this chapter, the chapters be- 
fore, or the chapters to come. 

The author avers upon his honor as a man that he has 
oft been awaked out of sound sleep before the cock- 
crow, and oft been debarred from his retiring after the 
family orisons, by many a male and many a female 
badgering him on matters of business whose import, 
when fully probed, developed no exigency beyond the 
veriest item appertaining to the ordinary routine of an 
American police court. 


WITAT THE PUBLIC EXPECTS OP THE JUDGE. 155 


He avers that at and on divers other times and oc- 
casions in each and every year for ten consecutive years, 
in the highways and the byways, at the nooks and on 
the corners and elsewhere, he has in like manner been 
badgered, buzzed, and besieged, to the sore trial of his 
official existence. 

He avers that on sundry other occasions, when the 
court was in actual session and a large crowd was attend- 
ant thereon, and many carriages hitched round about, 
w r ere advertising the fact, parties have called at his 
private residence and of his wife — who haply was in the 
midst of her baking, bed-making, or clothes-mending — 
inquired if Judge Wiglittle was there ; and when she 
has told them that Mr. Wiglittle was at the court-house, 
she supposed, as he usually was at such time, the parties 
have looked bewildered, asked where was the court- 
house, and said they did not know there was any court- 
house, and were apparently indisposed to credit the 
statement of the police court’s better half, and have pro- 
posed to walk in and keep the court’s better half com- 
pany until the partner of her life should return to his 
place of business. 

He further avers that the public expects the Judge to 
carry in his head, to deliver, expound, and apply at a 
minute’s warning, the entire volume of the Revised 
Statutes, with the voluminous supplements thereto, and 
whatever the Legislature for the time being may be 
formulating into law out of the innumerable petitions, 
reports, propositions, remonstrances, bills, and balderdash 
before it ; and to carry not less in his head, in con- 
venient parcels to suit beggars, the body complete of the 
common law from Coke on Littleton down to Holmes 
on Kent. 

And finally he avers of and concerning the public ex- 


156 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


pectation, and is ready to verify the averment, that the 
Judge is expected to reach out his right arm and con- 
strain the judges and juries of the courts above to see 
cases as he sees them, and in the event of their not so 
seeing and reaffirming his rulings, decisions, judgments, 
and sentences one and all, then in that case that he, the 
Judge, demur not if he be pronounced an idiot. 

This is only a general statement. The details would 
swell this chapter to insufferable proportions, and accord- 
ingly the chapter ends right here — or would but for 
another thing that remains to be said. 

The public expects the Judge to wear a muzzle. 
Opinions he may have, if forsooth he list, outside of law. 
This liberty is thought to be vouchsafed out of deference 
to the circumstances shadowed by the poet— 

“Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, 

Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, 

Can be retentive to the strength of spirit. 

But if opinions he have outside of law — opinions on 
politics, religion, temperance, schools, schoolhouses, 
village improvements, circuses, cattle-shows, tea-parties, 
picnics, sewing-circles, subscription-papers — let him be- 
ware ! He treads on forbidden ground if he open his 
mouth the same to express. Not but that he is ever and 
anon being enticed into a whisper, a composition, or an 
oration on one or the other of these topics, and, it may 
be, on all of them at once, and the tempters are pros and 
cons in such number as to flatter him with the idea that 
his word alone will settle a grave dispute and restore 
peace to a divided body politic— not this, but because 
somehow, notwithstanding this, the public expects laws 
to be silent amid arms — silent leges inter arma — and so 
it comes to pass that the moment lie launches his bark 


WHAT THE JUDGE DOES HOT EXPECT OF THE PUBLIC. 15 ? 

upon the pond-hole of free speech there is an uproar on 
the pond-hole. Great prows and little steer straight for 
his impertinent boat, and unless he navigate a skilful re- 
treat there is imminent danger of his dory being pierced 
through and through at the sides, and himself sunk in the 
depths of the fretted waters. Therefore the public ex- 
pects the Judge to keep off the pond. 


XIV. 

WHAT THE JUDGE DOES NOT EXPECT OF THE PUBLIC. 

What does the Judge not expect of the public? 
That it will deem him subject to the fallibilities and in- 
firmities of a finite being. Again the reader assumes to 
make answer, does he ? The reader better keep silent 
and not undertake to answer the questions herein asked, 
because it grows jalain that he is not quite sure of the 
ground he stands upon. If the reader had attentively 
read the preceding chapter and had the intelligence to 
understand it, he would have perceived what the Judge 
does not expect of the public, from perceiving what the 
public expects of him. But lest there should be any 
doubt about it, which there seems to be, this chapter will 
be devoted syn optically to what it purports to communi- 
cate. 

The Judge does not expect that the public will deem 
him to be made of clay. Oak, rock, flint, iron, brass, or 
whatever other material possesses qualities of surpassing 
endurance — this is what he is led inferentially by the 


158 


TEN - YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


public to think liimself made of. That flesh is heir to a 
break-down under the stress of extreme weather, such as 
long sessions of court in a small room filled to suffocation 
with curious, perfumery-bearing people, he is also taught 
to treat as a mere flight of poetic imagination. Judging 
from the interruptions he has suffered while attempting 
the indulgences, the public means to and does insinuate 
to its police-court Judge that sleep is a frailty, bathing 
an extravagant use of time, the cultivation of the mind 
apart from statutes, fees, and the fee-fi-fo-fums of the 
last police gazette, a frivolity, and the attendance upon 
entertainments religious or secular, a great waste. 
Hence he gravitates to the opinion that he ought not to 
sleep, bathe, read his (< Paradise Lost,” or go to meet- 
ing. 

Nor is he to expect the public to be mindful of the 
admonition, “ Bear ye one another’s burdens.” The 
burden of being composed hypothetically of lignum - 
vitae, gutta percha, pig iron, or whatever may be ever- 
lasting, is a burden which he alone must bear. The 
shoulders of Atlas in the palmy days of Greece and 
Rome were as nothing to the supposititious shoulders of 
the like of the gentleman who is the subject of these 
lines. To stand in Africa and bear up the universal 
heavens was a task. Hercules so proved it when the 
Atlsean fox beguiled him into the labor. But to stand 
Heaven only knows where, and bear up the canopy that 
looks down upon the planet of a police court, is a toil 
which the dreams of the mythologist did not compass. 

It is to bear blame — the blame of not knowing what 
one cannot know ; the blame of not doing what one may 
not do ; the blame of not being, like Boyle Roche’s bird, 
in two places at once ; the blame of unwillingness to do 
what the same Boyle Roche would gladly have done, 


WHAT THE JUDGE DOES HOT EXPECT OF THE PUBLIC. 150 


sacrifice not only a part of the constitution but the 
whole of it, for the sake of preserving the remainder ; 
the blame of not catching a thief before the barn was 
locked ; the blame of not punishing a rogue enough ; the 
blame of punishing him too much ; the blame of convict- 
ing the innocent, though the evidence showed him guilty; 
the blame of acquitting the guilty, though the evidence 
showed him innocent ; the blame of receiving a com- 
plaint ; the blame of refusing to receive it ; the blame of 
lacking evidence ; the blame of striving to get it ; the 
blame of demanding high bail ; the blame of taking low ; 
the blame of the poor for favoring the rich ; the blame of 
the rich for favoring the poor ; the blame of feeling too 
big ; the blame of feeling too little ; the blame of stirring 
up broils ; the blame of not stirring them down ; the 
blame of stealing fines ; the blame of no fines to steal ; 
the blame of smiling to the plaintiff ; the blame of smil- 
ing to the defendant ; the blame of judging before hear- 
ing ; the blame of hearing before judging. 

Nor is this all. It is to bear compliments repealed by 
changes of mind, odious comparisons, the spittings of 
spite, lyruta fulmina , anonymous letters, the paternity 
of others’ blunders, the law’s delay, laughter, jokes, 
jibes, contempt, and faint praise. 

Such, if the reader has followed the argument, are 
hints of some among the many things which the Judge 
does not expect to escape, and which therefore furnish a 
comparative answer to the interrogative caption of the 
concluded chapter. 


1G0 


TEH YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


XY. 

THE COURT AND THE PUBLIC A8 FRIENDS. 

It appears, doubtless, from what has been intimated, 
that the court and the public were in a state of ceaseless 
antagonism, and little better than open adversaries. 
Paradoxical as it may seem, the contrary is the truth. 
In point of fact, the court and the public were in the 
main steadfast friends. 

The relation of a police court to its bosom community 
may not inaptly be likened to the interesting relation of 
husband and wife. Except that it is not obvious which 
is the better half, the analogy holds good in all essential 
particulars. Yet is it not wholly obscure which is the 
party sustaining the wifely relation. Besides the func- 
tions of the court which are of a domestic turn and tenor — 
keeping the house, washing dishes and dirty linen, look- 
ing after the boys and girls while Sir Public is in the 
mills, stores, markets and ways a-money-making, it has 
been observed that upon the establishment of a police 
court in a community there is for three months or so a 
very tender disposition toward it on the public’s part, 
manifesting itself in blandishments and caresses remind- 
ful of the honeymoon. For this cause the opinion has 
more fully obtained that the relation of the police court 
to its bonded community is the marital one of wife or 
weaker vessel. 

The reader will now please to remark the analogy, as 
the author essays to point out or hint the similarities and 
similitudes of the united life of court and community to 
tiie conjugal life of a wedded pair. Gradually from the 


THE COURT AND THE PUBLIC AS FRIENDS. 161 


warmth of the nuptial hour the public cools in the ardor 
of its devotion and weakens in affectional demonstrations 
till the enthusiasm of the honeymoon period is no longer 
perceptible. The court ceases to be saluted with a kiss 
— ceases to anticipate it. As he (he the public) comes 
into the house he is less thoughtful in scraping his feet, 
even comes in smoking, and does not straightway drop a 
word in revival of the sweet memory ; instead of asking 
hintfully if this or that little thing might not be nicely 
done, scowls or perhaps growls that it has not been done. 
She (the court), though loath that the aroma of the knot- 
tying should thus pass away as a vapor, accepts with a 
sigh the situation, and in turn speaks out as if having a 
right or two that even men are bound to respect. 
Ominous mutter ings after a while are heard from the 
masculine side touching the feminine expensiveness ; to 
which retort is made that not the bonnets and balmorals 
of Madam so much cost as the bourbon and masonry of 
Mister ; and if, forsooth, they do, who for pity’s sake 
proposed this matter of marriage and housekeeping ? 
Pretty soon the viands fail to suit, and the reply is that 
they come of the flour and the plaguy stove. By and 
by children are born. Babies born of a police court ! 
Yes, babies — babies by twins, triplets, quadruplets. 
Every complainant, plaintiff, defendant, respondent ; 
every lawyer, every sheriff, constable, policeman, and 
lock-up keeper, ex and unex ; every witness, affiant, 
loafer, fusser, and teazer of the jurisdictional region is a 
baby born of the woman of the local police court. Bias 
of some sort, shade, or shape marks the maternity of the 
child, and the paternity is traceable to the features and 
fashions of pater the public. 

As the family circle enlarges bickerings grow' among 
the children as well as among the old folks. One parent 


162 TEH" YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 

takes sides against tlie other with this,' that, or the other 
darling. One set of darlings take sides against mamma 
for papa, or against papa for mamma. Controversies 
arise and run into each other as the years come and go, 
and oftimes wax hot. Divorce is broached, divorce is 
menaced, and the explosion seems inevitable. The lambs 
— these say, Let it come ; those pour oil on the troubled 
waters, and so it goes. But under it all, beneath the fret 
and worry of the visible stream, there is a steady current 
of calm, union, peace, locking of arms, going to the 
same church, loving the same pastor, and looking up and 
onward to the same goal and glory at length. The fast 
days are observed, the Fourth of July’s are celebrated, 
the Thanksgivings are sumptuous, the Christmas trees 
blossom forth, and generally 

The family parties are hale and as hearty 

As if public and court were not party and party. 


XYI. 

WHO OUGHT NOT TO TRY THE CASE. 

In justice, no magistrate ought to try the person against 
whom he receives the complaint. The ex parte hearing 
inevitably dispels the presumption with which every ac- 
cused person should come to trial. Of the truth of this, 
every magistrate who has exercised the double office of 
receiver and trier of the same complaints must be satis- 
fied. In vain will he endeavor to suppress the presump- 
tion of guilt which involuntarily arises upon the arraign- 


WHO OUGHT NOT TO TRY THE CASE. 


103 


ment and trial of the party against wliom lie lias heard a 
story and issued a warrant. He may be ev r so fair- 
minded in intent ; the adverse presumption rises and 
dominates every time with a force, if not equal to one 
witness, at least w r ith considerable force. 

It stands in human nature that it should be so. Be- 
fore the face of the accused is seen, or his voice, “Hot 
guilty,” is heard, an impression upon the magistrate’s 
mind unfavorable to him is made by a judicial act by 
which he is brought into court loaded with accusation. 
At the start he is at disadvantage. The scales are 
already tipped to his prejudice when they should be 
balanced for fair play. Hay, by the rule of law, the in- 
clination of the scales should at the outset side to his 
innocence. Gainsay it as we may, the contrary is the 
fact in probably more than half of the prosecutions as 
originally instituted and finally disposed of. in the State. 

How can this be just ? The Constitution says : “It 
is the right of every citizen to be tried by judges as 
free, impartial, and independent as the lot of humanity 
will admit.” A principle of law equally authoritative 
ordains that “ every person shall be presumed to be 
innocent until proved to be guilty.” In the light of 
these declarations, whose meaning is so unequivocal, is it 
not clear that the Constitution and the common law alike 
are both violated by the trial of every subject of the 
Commonwealth whose judge is the magistrate who issued 
against him the warrant ? The question is beyond argu- 
ment. To ask it is to answer, yea. The lot of humanity 
admits of greater freedom and impartiality in the judge 
than result from a course of judicial procedure by which 
the judge who is to try the case must inevitably incur a 
bias against the accused party. If not, the lot of 
humanity is deplorable enough. 


164 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


Then of a piece with this sitting in judgment of a 
man after being biassed against him, is this questioning of 
witnesses by the trial- justice, particularly the cross-ex- 
amination by the justice of the defendant’s witnesses. 
The very act of cross-examination puts the court that 
does it in an attitude hostile to the defendant. It avails 
little to say that the court is but seeking for the fact and 
the truth. Cross-examination, mild as you may make it, 
is a war of words. It is antagonism between the ques- 
tioner and the questioned. The act itself of questioning, 
as it is done to extort facts other than and contradictory 
to those the witness has already testified to, excites in 
the examiner an incredulity as toward the witness. He 
is sinuously and insinuatingly led into a state of distrust 
of him. Generally this is so, and always is apt to be so, 
especially if the examination is protracted and the 
witness is not tractable. Now, this antagonism of exami- 
nation, as it necessarily warps the mind, should not be a 
part of the mental condition of the judge. Yet in three 
fourths, perhaps, of the cases in the lower courts the 
work of sounding and picking the defendant’s witnesses 
devolves on the defendant’s judge. It is impossible that 
he should not seem to the spectator to be contending 
for the Commonwealth as against the accused, and it is 
equally impossible for him not to feel that lie is doing 
that very thing. But in the eye of the Constitution and 
all good law of the land he ought not to be judge for the 
State more than for the accused citizen. 

The lot of humanity admits of reform in this matter, 
and the Constitution as well as common-sense demands 
it. Provision should be made for the reception of all 
complaints by an official other than the trier of the case, 
and for the due examination of all witnesses without any 
participation by the court therein. Then the petit judge 


CHIMES, BUT NOT CASES. 


105 


might sit on his benchlet with much, very much more 
likelihood of a less scaly holding of the scales. 


XVII. 

CRIMES, BUT NOT CASES. 

There is many a crime in many a place — in every 
place — but the sound thereof is heard by no police ear. 
Is not this so ? Yea, even so. Many a perpetrator 
knows it — many a sufferer. The repentance of the one 
and the forbearance of the other sometimes co-operate 
for silence, and sometimes, without any contrition of the 
criminal, the pride of family or the fidelity of friendship 
exclude knowledge and spare exposure. The crimes 
that thus sleep in the confidence of injured parties, 
secure from the attacks of prosecution, are not seldom 
the gravest and most flagitious known to law. Larcenies, 
forgeries, defalcations, adulteries, bestialities, even mur- 
der itself are included in the offences that break the law 
without the law knowing the offender. How much of 
unhappiness, distress, and misery is so wrapped up, un- 
observed by the world and scarcely to the world inti- 
mated, is matter of speculation ; but safe enough it is to 
say that hardly a village or neighborhood, one or more of 
whose inhabitants do not groan beneath the burden of 
crime unwhipped of justice, and feel the burden lighter 
because the criminal goes unwhipped. 

But many more crimes still there are that do not 
eventuate into cases for two reasons — either because there 


166 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


is not evidence enough to make cases out of them, or 
because they are too inconsequential to be put on any 
criminal docket. With these two classes of infractions 
of law every police court has to deal much and be tried, 
in spirit a good deal. It is not easy to say which of the 
two the more exercises the court’s judgment and exhausts 
its patience ; and as little easy is it to make plain how 
and to what extent the court’s equanimity is thereby dis- 
turbed, and, if the word be allowable, upset. 

Take, for instance, in illustration of the uncasable 
crimes, the following : A man has had. his horse stolen 
out of the barn. No matter whether a good horse or 
poor, here is something that law is bound to take notice 
of — that is to say, law is bound to open its ears and 
hearken to all that may be said on the subject. The 
fact that the horse is stolen is indisputable, because the 
owner avers it. So far so good. Here is a foundation 
for a case, and nothing is lacking but the superstructure. 
For the rearing of that the grave inquiry arises, Who 
stole the beast ? The owner has not the slightest doubt 
in his mind that Ned Hubbard is the thief, and against 
Ned Hubbard he wants a warrant. 

“ What, Mr. Johnson, is the basis of your belief in 
Ned Hubbard’s culpability?” 

44 Why, it is just like him.” 

44 Anything more ?” 

44 Yes ; he was seen ’round my barn.” 

44 Has he since departed the vicinage, or does he con- 
tinue at his usual place of abode ?” 

44 Oh ! he’s round the same as ever, and that’s just like 
him too. He’s throwing dust, but he dusted off with 
the horse all the same.” 

44 Do you trace him to any act of taking or having the 
animal in his possession ?” 


CRIMES, BUT NOT CASES. 


167 


“Well, no ; as to that 1 can’t say 1 do ; but just put a 
warrant on him, and he’ll show the white feather fast 
enough. 1 know him.” 

“ But no warrant should issue against a fellow-citizen 
unless for probable cause, as shown by evidence more or 
less specific, tending to incriminate him.” 

u Fellow-citizen ! The place for such fellow-citizens 
as Ned Hubbard is State prison.” 

u Granted, if he have done aught to send him 
thither.” 

“ Well, I’ve told you what I know about it.” 

u True ; but have you told me aught that is specific or 
even specious ?” 

“ You’re the judge, I suppose.” 

“Exactly.” 

Exit Mr. Johnson, who goes abroad to disseminate 
prejudice against the court. He wants to know what a 
police court is for if not to do justice. He wants to 
know what Judge Wiglittle is there for if not to issue 
warrants against horse- thieves. He wants to know what 
sort of a judge a judge is who will not take complaints 
when they are offered. He wants to know if our judges 
are going to have everything their owm way. He wants 
to know if they are going to set up their judgment 
against self-evident facts in cases of larceny of horses, 
and other valuable property. The effect of all this 
wanting to know is to J ohnsonize a fraction of the com- 
munity. The fraction may be large, the fraction may 
be small, but, larger or smaller, a fraction foams with ire 
or grief that infractions of the law are winked at by the 
very tribunal that ought to frown them down. In a 
word, Mr. Johnson lets loose imprisoned winds from his 
caves, and blows up a tempest. It may be a tempest in a 
teapot. Doubtless, and a very small teapot too. But 


1G8 


TEK YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


what of that ? No judge is so imperturbable as not to 
be ruffled a little by teapot tempests. 

Accordingly, it may as well be confessed that some- 
times, not often, but once in a while , judges have been 
known, when in a very peace-loving mind, to issue war- 
rants upon the application of cave-wind Johnsons to 
avoid the sputtering of the familiar kitchen utensil, 
though the evidence was manifestly insufficient to war- 
rant the warrant. This is not as it should be, because it 
makes unwarranted expense for the State, and tends to 
lessen in public esteem the Ned Hubbards who, in legal 
eye at least, are entirely crimeless. As to whether the 
Johnsons or the judges are the more blamable for these 
groundless prosecutions, the reader will form his own 
opinion ; but before forming it, he would better under- 
stand that it is no slight matter, when a hot-headed John- 
son comes to a human judge with a complaint in one 
hand and a teapot in the other, and says, Take the com- 
plaint or take the teapot. 

As for the crimes of the other class — those that do not 
eventuate in cases — it cannot be said that they are kept 
out of court for lack of evidence. They are kept out, 
or ought to be, because it is evident that they ought not 
to be brought in. They are or should be a part of those 
trifles which law disdains to recognize. Though incon- 
testable violations of law, the law cannot notice them 
without stooping, and the law never stoops, or, to speak 
more accurately, she dislikes to stoop, and never fails to 
chide her ministers when they so compromise her dignity. 
Law is royalty, and should as little condescend to take 
formal notice of many of the petty breaches of her 
mighty code as a crowned head, traversing any part of 
his realm, could deign to resent a hoot or hiss from 
irreverent persons of the multitude. As the crowd 


CRIMES, BUT NOT CASES. 


169 


would lose respect for the crown if the crown, when 
hooted at, should rise in the carriage of state and shake 
the royal fist at the rabble, so law soils her robes and 
weakens her majesty by bestowing attention on pecca- 
dilloes. For this canse it is that the police court, more 
than any other court under the sun, holds the dignity of 
the law largely in its keeping. Nay, it is not too much 
to assert that the police court holds the majesty of the 
law in the very hollow of its hand, insomuch that her 
majesty would be nowhere if the police court did not 
hold its hand with considerable circumspection. A diffi- 
cult thing it is to draw the line with precision between 
the peccadilloes that should be viewed with contempt and 
the misdemeanors which justice should lift its whip to 
smite. So exquisitely nice is this partition line that 
divides the casable crimes from the uncasable, that the 
expert eye is not seldom unequal to the nice distinction ; 
and first the police court knows it has docketed a case 
that bedraggles the law, or has declined to docket one 
which the law ought to have docketed. It is a question 
of more or less gravity, which damages the fair name of 
law the more, to pick up a peccadillo and erect it into an 
offence, or not to prosecute what ought to be prosecuted. 
The prevailing opinion of sound minds would seem to 
be that the ceremonious prosecution of one peccadillo 
shakes law more than the non-prosecution even of a 
felony. As it is better to lose a dollar than steal a cent, 
so is it wiser that a crime go unpunished than a crimelet 
be pushed. The reader may ask what is a crimelet ? 
What is a peccadillo ? What is a petty infringement of 
law that ought to be brushed aside as one would shoo a 
fly ? It is not easy to define, yet are the infringements 
nearly as common as flies in fly-time. 

Who shall walk the street and not see violations of 


170 


TEN" YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


Jaw at every turn ? Wherefore drives this team to the 
left and that to the right ? Wherefore does not this 
driver give the other half the road ? Wherefore does 
not that horse in a sled jingle three or more bells ? 
Who shall go to church and not see in all the worship- 
pers violators of the Lord’s day ? What one of them all, 
including the minister, has not since the sunrise done 
something which was not a work of necessity, charity, or 
mercy ? Who shall make the circuit of a village, though 
sweet as Goldsmith’s Auburn, and not remark mani- 
fold breaches of unrepealed law ? By what legal right 
does Mr. Lounger loaf, smoke, and gab in the grocery, 
pilfering the grocer’s matches, nibbling his stores, 
wearing out his chairs and flour barrels, and keeping off 
his customers ? By what law, writ or unwrit, does Bob 
Helterskelt cut across yonder garden, pick up apples as 
he goes along, and tumble down the wall as he goes out ? 
Under what color of legal sanction does Mr. Beetlehead 
hitch his cribbing steed to Mr. Loveshade’s promising 
tree and bark it nigh unto death ? Where is the statute, 
opinion, or dictum that authorizes Widow Fowler’s flock 
of hens to wander abroad and scratch up Mrs. Prim’s 
flower-bed ? These for illustration. The list entire is 
long. 

But there is another class of lawless performances 
which, though they do not peck more harmfully at the 
robes of the law’s majesty than do the foregoing, are yet 
far more apt to be thrust upon the attention of the law’s 
ministers. They are for the most part neighborhood 
broils — fallings out of man with man, woman with 
woman, woman with man, or urchin with urchin, whose 
aggrieved parents — parents of the urchins — take up the 
matter and demand justice, if such a thing there be on 
the face of this terrestrial ball ! 


CRIMES, BUT HOT CASES. 


171 


It may be that J olm A. struck with his tongue at the 
cha-rac-ter of Cornelius B., and thereupon the latter 
threw a chew of tobacco at the former and hit him in 
the ear. It may be that Ellen C. and Bridget D. were 
hanging out clothes in a common yard and one - called the 
other “ out of her name,” and the miscalled threw a 
clothes-pin and hit the miscaller somewhere and u lmrted 
her not mooch, but a little now, ye know.” It may be 
that Matthew Gr. imbibed an extra schooner of beer, and, 
in the exuberance of his spirits, became oblivious of 
marriage vows, and unlovingly reminded Maggie, his 
wife, that she took him for better or worse. It may be 
that Patsy and Mikey were playing marbles, and a little 
cheating was done, and the defrauded juvenile flew at 
the cheat, and the two went down in the mud, and one 
boy or the other came on top. Such are the doings that 
are being done in every considerable neighborhood, and 
out of them come earnest appeals to the local court for 
the dispensation of justice. Positive violations of law 
are all these doings, but what then ? Will law and order 
be promoted by any undertaking to suppress such sur- 
face lawlessness and disorder ? Will the deep be more 
quieted by battling those bubbles ? Is it not better to 
leave the bubbles to burst than to take up time in prick- 
ing them ? Suppose we should go about pricking them, 
might not the labor stir up more effervescence than it 
would allay? Is there not such a thing as making a 
mountain out of a mole-liill ? And, if so, may not a 
neighborhood broil be broadened and braced by boring it 
with the great auger of law ? It is confidently believed 
that such is likely to be the case. Accordingly is it be- 
lieved that the less law uses its auger in boring broils, 
the more will it augment its dignity and power. 


TEN YEA ItS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


1 72 


XVIII. 

THE OCCASIONAL CASE. 

It is interesting to observe how there will come along 
every now and then a case which, while it is of no special 
importance as involving a principle or affecting the pub- 
lic welfare, or even a single citizen, will nevertheless take 
a strong hold of the community and stir it to its pro- 
foundest depths. Such a case may be the prosecution, 
for a minor misdemeanor, of some scion of an old family, 
whose blood and social relations ramify through a town ; 
or the prosecution of some member of an organization, a 
Masonic lodge, political club, or the like, who has per- 
haps stood forth defiantly on occasion as the representa- 
tive of his order ; or the prosecution, for a violation of 
the Lord’s day, of some citizen who, though not a mem- 
ber of the church, is generally regarded as good as a 
church-member. 

Such a case throws sometimes the whole local region 
into commotion — divides it into acrimonious, side-taking 
factions — and makes for the time the little court that is to 
decide the little issue the centre of an all-absorbing in- 
terest. Such a case is never tried on the day of the 
arraignment. There is a continuance once, and more 
likely twice, possibly thrice, for defensive preparations 
and preparations offensive as well. Some “ smart” 
lawyer is sure to appear for the defendant and some 
lawyer supposed to be equally smart, but by whom 
employed nobody ever seems to know, is about as sure 
to appear for “ the Commonwealth.” 

Meanwhile — that is, pending the continuance or the 


THE OCCASIONAL CASE. 


173 


continuances, society is agog. Rumors are rife and 
estrangements in business and family circles grow wider 
every day. Persons who are expected to testify on the 
one side and the other are eyed with suspicion and 
attacked with vehemence by persons whose side their 
testimony is expected to damage. Charges of bribery 
and perjury are freely dispensed. The officer who has 
served the warrant, and who is warmed, forsooth, by the 
excitement into a bias against the accused, is looked 
upon by the friends of the latter as no better than he 
should be. Nay, there are hints thrown out that he 
stirred the whole thing up. He ought to be stripped of 
his commission. No decent officer would serve such a 
warrant, he would not. In truth, as the day of trial 
approaches public tension is at such stretch that another 
day of the law’s delay would seem to be fatal to the 
public’s self-control. Even the immaculate court is not 
above suspicion, else why this delay ? is inquired on the 
right and the left by the faction for equally with the 
faction against the man whose name is on everybody’s 
lips. 

At length the hour of trial comes, and the capacity of 
the limited court-room is put to its utmost test. Fort- 
unate is the man or boy who, by early going or patient 
waiting, has secured a seat, standing room, or even a peep- 
hole. While the crowd are nestling into their places, 
the lawyers, preparatory to striking the first blow, are 
bustling round within the incapacious bar, each viewed 
with the eye of admiration by about half of the 
assembled multitude, and each viewed with the eye of 
scorn by about the other half. The judge, perked up on 
his puggy bench and wearing a countenance of gravity 
befitting the solemn occasion, is looked upon by all as 
possibly a good man, entitled to the benefit of doubts, 


174 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


till in tlie mind of one hemisphere of the assembled globe 
his final judgment may have determined him a wretch 
to be impeached. This is no time for trilling, says every- 
body, with ill-concealed look. Here and now we want 
justice , say all, and here and now all venture to hope that 
justice will be done. There is only one way this thing 
can be decided, and decided right, and this (our way) 
is the way everybody, before a particle of evidence is 
heard, is unquestionably satisfied. 

While the first witnesses are being heard the expression 
of the. entire audience is as if it should say aloud, 
“ Why, O Judge, do you haggle and wiggle? Why 
not out with-it, since already, from your inmost soul, you 
know what justice demands ?” Nevertheless, the hear- 
ing goes on and goes on all day, wading through ex- 
aminations and cross-examinations, objections, rulings, 
rebuttals, sur-rebuttals, arguments to the court and 
harangues to the crowd, till at last the evidence is all in 
and all summed up, and the deathly pause ensues when 
his mightiness is expected to open his mouth to some 
purpose. 

With such skill as he may, his Honor essays to review 
the evidence without prematurely discovering what way 
sets the current of his judicial waters. He fain would 
spare, to the utmost limit of time, the feelings of that half 
of the universe whose spirit he must needs in the end 
wound to a great bleeding. This is a difficult, nice, and 
very perplexing role to play on these momentous occa- 
sions, and fortunate indeed, at such times, is the judge 
who is so gifted with pleasant arts of dissimulation, 
and suavity of speech, and graduality of conclusions, as 
to enable him to let half the community gently down to 
the ground. If he let so considerable a weight suddenly 
fall or go down joltingly, woe to his ermine ! If he can 


ACQUITTED DEFENDANTS. 


175 


contrive to let it drop with some compliment to liis 
dexterity and tenderness of heart, he may get safely 
out of the court-room and safely home ; but that will 
not be the last of it, please understand. The half of 
the crowd who do not disperse jubilantly may not retire 
in boisterous outbreak, but they move off sullen and 
sour, and on the morrow look out for animadversions and 
all sorts of mutterings of vengeance to come. 

They, the dissenters, never did think much of Judge 
Doe’s discernment, probity, or fitness for his place any- 
way. Now they are sure he disgraces his office, and 
that he ought to be decapitated. He may be honest, 
but if honest, he is a fool. If not a fool, then he is a 
knave. In either event he ought not to be judge any 
more. 

So they rail, the nonconformists ; but as they have to 
combat the arguments of the other half of the world who 
side with the fool or the knave, they get no time to pre- 
pare articles of impeachment before their blood cools a 
little, and by the time their blood cools a little along 
comes a case that is decided in their favor ; then hurrah 
for the judge ! By jolly ! he does know something, 
after all. 


XIX. 

ACQUITTED DEFENDANTS. 

When the government prosecutes and the accused is 
acquitted, why should it not make restitution ? The 
denial of it is contrary to the rule of fair dealing so 


176 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


universally recognized in human affairs, and opposed as 
well to the principle of fairness which law affects to up- 
hold and honor in all things else. Who presumes to in- 
jure another in his person, property, or reputation with- 
out admitting in the forum of conscience that he ought 
to indemnify the injured party ? Who commits the in- 
jury without the law saying to the wrongdoer, “ Redress 
the grievance 5 5 ? Wherefore then should the govern- 
ment attack groundlessly the name of a subject, and 
thereby put him to shame and cost, and not repair the 
damage ? It must be assumed that whoever is acquitted 
is absolved absolutely from the guilt imputed in the 
charge. This is true in theory, and in legal contempla- 
tion is the fact. 1ST or is it to be said that the acquitted, 
though innocent, are blamable for the circumstances 
that seemed to color them with guilt, and therefore 
should suffer to the extent necessary to vindicate their 
innocence. Until the law makes it an offence for one to 
be suspected of crime, it cannot in justice punish him as 
the mere object of suspicion. But that is what it does 
to every one who is tried and found legally guiltless. 

The cruelty of this thing is barbaric. Indeed, it is 
but a relic of barbarian civilization, the hateful vestige 
of despotic authority. “ The king can do no wrong — the 
king can think no wrong” is the voice that comes down 
to us from the hauteur of autocracy ; and it is just this 
piece of kingly assumption which we have engrafted 
upon our republican “ government of the people by the 
people for the people. 5 ’ As the king could do no 
wrong, he might arraign his subjects at will for what- 
ever cause, and they were to be ever so thankful for 
their lives, though spared at the expense of their fort- 
unes and their good name. Just that royal attribute of 
perfection, the fiction of tyranny, mollified by the lapse 


ACQUITTED DEFENDANTS. 


177 


of centuries, survives in every republic that compels a 
citizen to incur the cost of defence that results in his 
acquittal. 

If the common welfare require that all should be in- 
dicted and tried whom an ex-parte hearing determines to 
be probably guilty, should not those who prove not to 
be guilty be defended at the common expense ? Is it 
not asking too much of the unoif ending individual, who 
happens to be accused of crime, that he alone should 
suffer in his purse for the sake of public justice, to the 
exclusion of all others of the State not similarly accused ? 
This inquiry does not include the odium with which 
every prosecution necessarily burdens every innocent 
defendant. If the individual must needs bear the 
odium, should not the public be able to bear the ex- 
pense ? 

Why should the State discriminate in favor of itself in 
respect of the same transaction to which it and a citizen 
may be a party plaintiff ? Take the case of A, accused 
of striking B. The State proceeds against A, and 
failing to prove the assault, A has to foot the bill of his 
defence. Plaintiff B proceeds against A, and, failing 
in the proof, has to pay the costs of Defendant A’s 
witnesses and various other fees — that is, the State may 
try with impunity its experiment of convicting a man 
of crime, the individual can try his , based upon the 
same facts, only at the peril of reimbursement if the ex- 
periment fail. It is right that B’s suit should be thus 
weighted with the condition. But by so much the more 
able the State is to bear its own and a guiltless defend- 
ant’s expense, by so much the more should it be re- 
quired to bear it. 

It is worthy of inquiry whether it is not the demand 
of justice that the government should, in all cases of 


178 


TEN - YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


criminal proceeding, defray the expense of the defence, 
including that of a suitable attorney to conduct it. 
Government is highly concerned in the due observance 
of its laws ; but the highest wisdom argues that it should 
not be more concerned in the conviction of offenders 
than for the protection of the innocent. It is repugnant 
to the paternal nature of government that it should even 
seem to be solicitous to find its subjects guilty of dis- 
obedience ; much more that upon failure to find them so 
it should manifest a sense of disappointment by taxing 
them the cost of showing their loyalty. Still more is it 
unpaternal, selfish, and arbitrary to deny a subject, when 
in conflict with itself, the very thing which it concedes to 
be just when he is contending with a fellow-subject. 
How can that be just between the State and the in- 
dividual which is not justice between man and man in 
respect to one and the same controversy ? Soberly 
viewed, it is neither more nor less than rank injustice 
for the State, with all its power and resources, to accuse 
the individual and make him pay the bill for exposing 
the falsity of the charge. If such a thing should be 
proposed as a fresh proposition, intelligence and fair play 
would revolt from it. Only long usage makes it toler- 
able. Oppression itself is at length borne as a sort of 
matter of right, but as matter of right the yoke should 
be thrown off. 


POLICE OFFICERS. 


179 


XX. 

POLICE OFFICERS. 

In charity it should he believed that most people pre- 
fer to see a man found innocent rather than guilty. 
"W ithout resort to much charity, it is believed that most 
people do. But rarely, if ever, is this true of a police- 
man — if he prosecute the case. If he be an old policeman, 
and has made or caused the complaint to be made, or has 
furnished information for the indictment, and the judge 
or jury acquit the prisoner, almost, if not quite, his 
heart breaks ; or if, as some assert, an old policeman, in 
the matter of prosecutions, is void of heart, then instead 
of heart-breaking his sense of justice is torn to tatters. 

It is quite remarkable — the despondency, gloom, and 
despair itself that will sometimes take possession of a 
veteran prosecutor when judge or jury, after weighing 
the evidence which he has adduced, arrive at a conclusion 
which he had not reached. It is to no purpose that he 
is given credit for .having done his whole duty. It is 
no comfort that he is assured of the innocence of his 
fellow-citizen. This is mere dust and ashes. He wrings 
his hands, his eyes lose their lustre, and he begins to dis- 
trust even courts at whose shrine he has so long laid his 
choicest offerings. But the shock to his faith is short- 
lived. He rallies at the sound of the next rogue, and is 
as radiant as ever : 

“ Bash heat perhaps, a moment may control, 

Not break the settled temper of his soul. ” 

But though this confidence in the guilt of the prisoner 
is so regnant in cases where he is himself the accuser, 


180 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


liis assurance is not so marked and obvious when a 
fellow-officer is the prosecuting genius. Then lie is apt 
to think, and is sometimes bold enough to say that every 
man is to be presumed innocent till proved guilty. On 
one occasion, it is said, that while a trial was going in 
which he felt little or no personal interest, a scarred and 
gray-haired policeman blurted out the liberal remark 
that it was better a thousand guilty men should go un- 
punished than that one innocent should suffer. Indeed, 
it is not an uncommon thing for sheriffs, deputy-sheriffs, 
constables, watchmen, detectives, bailiffs, or by what- 
ever other names warrant-servers are known, to con- 
template the efforts and enterprises of one another in 
the cause of public justice with feelings akin to distaste, 
distrust, disparagement, nay — disgust. It is true that 
now and then, and not unfrequently, two or more of these 
peace guardians may lock arms and co-operate in a case 
for the common weal ; but if ever two co-operated with- 
out each lamenting in the other the want of tact, 
shrewdness, gumption, and all manner of policeal smart- 
ness, the instance is not reported. 

There is another funny thing about police officers. 
When one has been one one wants to be one always. If 
one has been one a pretty good spell, till he has got the 
hang of the court-house, acquired the police dialect, and 
some mastery of its idioms, and has invested in a stately 
fob chain, with seal ring, and so forth to match, and 
then is “ bounced,” he is of all mortals the most incon- 
solable and forlorn. Life has for him no attractions 
from badges, billies, and hand-cuffs apart. He addresses 
himself at once and as regularly as vacancies occur, or 
possibly may, to the retrieval of his fortune. It happens 
generally that, though he abides in perpetual hope, he 
never retrieves it. The ex-official goes down to his 


POLICE OFFICERS. 


181 


grave — never prematurely, for outrageous fortune, as if 
to mock him to the uttermost, lengthens out his days to 
patriarchal length — goes down to his grave disappointed 
indeed, but with the proud consciousness that he was 
once a policeman and with policemen stood. 

So much may be said of the salient peculiarities of 
policemen. If the saliencies be faults, even the failings 
have a leaning to virtue’s side. For without the eager- 
ness of the policeman to convict his man, how often 
might the guilty go unpunished ; and without the eager- 
ness of the ex-official to be unexed, how might the State 
sometimes be without the right man in the right place '( 
In truth, take the police all and in all, and there is to be 
observed a notable leaning to virtue. What would the 
people do without these watchmen on the parapets of 
their citadel ? Stop and think. What of a city without 
a police ? What of a town without a constable ? A 
good deal may be rightly said against the tribe — a good 
deal is — but a good deal more is said heedlessly by some 
and maliciously by others. Compared with the coin 
they receive, no corresponding number of men get more 
kicks. No set of men are more roundly abused, yet a 
more serviceable set the necessities of society call not 
into office. Save the man of war, who is more exposed 
to peril than the policeman, if he do the duty his oath 
prescribes ? If the earnest, fearless, vigilant police 
officer, who mixes with the qualities implied by these 
epithets the requisite salt of prudence, be not the most 
useful member of the body politic, who is ? To make 
him such, courage, prudence, and vigilance must, to be 
sure, nicely combine. A policeman without courage is 
not worth a fly. A courageous policeman without 
prudence is a fool. A policeman courageous and pru- 
dent,. but not vigilant, is a minus quantity. But it does 


182 


TEH YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


not follow tliat every wise man, who is also brave and 
constant, would make a good police officer. Solomon, 
had he been as brave, as wise, and as ambitions to walk a 
beat as he was to build a temple, and as assiduous in the 
calling as he was in wife -getting, might have proved a 
poor constable. As poets, so policemen are born, not 
made. It is necessary that they like the business to be 
good for anything. How anybody can like it is strange, 
but there are enough who do. Many like the business 
who have not the first qualification for it — many in every 
community throughout America and throughout the 
world. There is a statute which imposes a penalty on 
the man who, being elected, refuses to act as constable. 
"Why such a statute was ever enacted would excite sur- 
prise if there were not many other statutes equally un- 
sensible. The inanity of this statute is that to elect a 
man a constable who did not want to be one would be 
folly, while to suppose that the office would ever go 
begging is sheer ignorance. 

Disagreeable as are the duties of the policeman, 
perilous as they are if fully performed, exhausting as 
they are alike to the body and the mind of the vigilant 
watch, there is never any difficulty in finding persons 
enough to take the office. But there is trouble enough 
in finding persons enough to fill the office. While the 
office is never begging for incumbents who will wear the 
badge, it is always begging for such as are competent to 
wear it. Whether in the city or the country there is 
ever a surplus of candidates for the badges. 

However it would seem otherwise, it probably requires 
greater pluck to be a good police officer in the country 
than in the city. In the city the police is more as an 
army moving in column, or battalion, or at least in squad ; 
physical courage is required, but billies in company can 


POLICE OFFICERS. 


183 


brace up better than billies separated. Ill the country 
the active policeman is rather as a lone guard who must 
face his foe single-handed ; he may call on by-stand ers 
for help, if there be any, but generally there are not, 
and, if there be, they are so apt to lag that the game flies 
unless the officer be smart enough to cage it alone. 
Then as for moral courage the city policeman knows 
little or nothing of what is required in that line compared 
with his country contemporary in the occupation. In 
the city nobody gossips. In the city nobody gossips 
about this, that, or the other policeman, whether he 
does too much, too little, or nothing at all — -hardly any- 
body. In the country everybody gossips ; and the 
policeman who has there put on his badge as a sign of 
business, is the particular personage whom the gossipers 
of the fault-finding species do pelt and pepper. He is 
the one man who is never let alone ; who is never praised 
without dispraise ; who can never do without some 
charge of overdoing, underdoing, or misdoing ; who 
can never omit to do without some insinuation of bribery 
and corruption. He will be pushed to go for this man, 
and, if he go for him, there is an uprising to know why 
he does not go for that other ? and if he go for him,, the 
toes are trod upon of some of the good bodies who first 
said stee-boy ! If he prosecute offenders as required by 
law, a clamor arises that he is stirring up strife ; and if 
he do not prosecute as by law required, there is a noise 
because he is so still. To-day he receives an anonymous 
epistle threatening him with an ouster if he do not push 
things ; to-morrow he receives another threatening him 
with a gun-shot if he do not stop pushing. If he be 
alert and go without sleep and meals to run down a 
thief, he is taunted with running up a fee-bill ; if he do 
not run for the thief, he is either too lazy, or a fool, or a 


184 : 


TEH YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


tliief himself. If lie holds on to his office, he holds on 
because there is a million in it ; if he talks of giving it 
up, he is a pretty man who would quit the business just 
when the people want him most. 

Nor is this exaggeration. The peculiar, not to say 
exasperating, experience of an active, determined police 
officer in a crime-committing section of the country it is 
quite impossible to overstate. The slings and arrows of 
a certain outrageous fortune, he certainly has to bear. 
It is easy enough to say that all this fault-finding is harm- 
less. Grant it to be harmless, is it not harrowing ? It 
is easy to say that if he does not like it, he need not 
endure it. To his praise be it said, he does like, likes 
the business of policeman. If he did not, community 
would speedily see the necessity of finding some one who 
did, some one who not only liked the business, but, 
knowing how, would dare to do it. Community, when 
community gets a plucky officer, who will pick up its 
peace-destroyers and snap his fingers at the fault-finders, 
better keep him, if it can, and build a monument to his 
memory when he dies prematurely from overwork in the 
ungracious cause. 

‘ ‘ A wise physician skilled our wounds to heal 
Is more than armies to the public weal.” 

True, but this is truer : 

A plucky bailiff schooled our growls to bear 
Is more than gov’nors perked up in their chair. 


WITNESSES. 


185 


XXL 

WITNESSES. 

Witnesses differ. As no two faces are alike, so no 
two witnesses. They differ in manner, method, and 
motive ; in wit and wisdom, and in all other things, if 
any, which enter into the character of man. The varie- 
ties number as many as the witnesses on the stand, but 
admit of some classification, and for want of a better the 
following may be taken : the swift witness, the slow 
witness, the roundabout witness, the cautious witness, 
the voluble witness, the pedantic witness, and the good 
witness. The subject will be treated under these heads. 

The swift witness. He is glad to be at court. He 
was bound to come. If he had not been summoned, he 
would have been there. Most likely no subpoena has ever 
grazed, much less hit him. He knew when the case 
was coming on bv instinct, and he was there as soon as 
the party himself, whose case he knows a thing or two 
about. His interest in the case, though in legal con- 
templation he be not interested at all, surpasses the in- 
terest of the party whose witness he is. He has talked 
about the case for a month, and he talked about 
it aloud in the cars, the omnibus, or other vehicle 
going to court, and now that he has got to court at last 
lie sits an eager one among the throng, awaiting the 
signal for business. At the call of his name he actually 
jumps off his feet, and bounds forward to the theatre of 
action. As the mettlesome horse, impatient to speed on 
his way, champs the bit and quivers in the harness, and 
no sooner feels the tread of his driver on the step of the 


186 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


buggy than lie springs as if to outstrip the north-east 
wind, so the swift witness, swollen with an imprisoned 
story and bursting to let it out in full effulgence upon the 
case, no sooner feels the prick of the pin of a very pre- 
liminary question, than he begins to let it out at the rate 
of forty yards a minute. “ Hold up !” cries the lawyer 
on the other side, with hair standing on end. But there 
is no hold up till at least a dozen yards are rattled off, to 
the sore grief of the judge as well as the dismay of the 
objecting counsel. Willing witness the swift witness is 
often called, but it is preferable to style him the swift 
witness, from his resemblance to the high-strung steed 
spoken of. As the bit-champing steed overturns the 
buggy, breaks the driver’s neck, and is a very different 
appearing animal from what he was a short time before 
he proudly quivered in the harness, so the swift witness, 
triumphantly overriding for a brief season the rules of 
law, is not unapt to break the neck of his friend’s case, 
and go off the stand a very different-looking creature 
from what he was when he went on. 

The slow witness. The slow is the unwilling witness. 
He is at court because he had to be. If he had not had 
a subpoena shot plump at him, he would not have been 
there. He takes the stand with a face not unfair, but 
with a sullen soul. His oath bestrides him as a nuisance. 
So far from making him speak out, it shuts his mouth. 
He is not to be coaxed or scared. He may know, 
doubtless does, more about the case than any other three 
very knowing witnesses, but he forgets, cannot remem- 
ber. The fact might be thus, or so, and might not ; he 
cannot say. What he knows about the case must be dug 
for with pick and shovel, or bored for with interrogative 
augers, or smoked out with inquisitorial pitch, or routed 
by some strategy of surprise. Ask him if the thing was 


WITNESSES. 


187 


not as intimated, lie does not remember ; ask him if lie 
lias not once so said, and he does not remember ; ask him 
if he cannot refresh his recollection, and he cannot say ; 
ask him if he cannot say what he thinks, and he thinks 
he cannot. Did he not hear what was said on the 
occasion ? He might ; but if he did, he has forgotten. 
Did he not see what was done ? He was not noticing. 
He has no interest in the case ? Hot he. lie is not 
often cross-examined, and he goes off the stand under 
suspicion of being a huge prevaricator, if not liar. 

The roundabout witness. This man wants to conform 
to the obligations of his oath and tell the truth, the 
whole truth, and nothing but the truth. For this pur- 
pose he would begin back to a date anterior to the 
building of the tower of Babel, and follow down, in con- 
sistent narrative, to the precise point of the case. If told 
that the location of the tower and the confusion of 
tongues are not in controversy, but simply whether John 
Peters tore down Peter John’s wall, he says, very 
well ; he is glad to know it, and will bear it in mind, and 
starts again ; but hardly has he started when he is wan- 
dering again in the region of Babel. Will he be so kind 
as to omit Babel and all succeeding events and genera- 
tions, down to the time when the particular case in court 
had origin ? He certainly will, and certainly tries so to 
do, but certainly cannot. Fated he is to put Babel into 
the case, and into it Babel goes, and this is about all 
the case gets from the roundabout witness. 

The cautious witness. He is under oath, and not for 
the life of him or the court itself would he be unmindful 
of the solemn fact. He desires to understand precisely 
the question, and will the counsel please repeat it. The 
counsel repeats, and Mr. Caution proceeds to answer. 
He has answered — with guarded phrase he has answered 


138 


TEH YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


— and the answer is in evidence. Hush ! It was thought 
to be ; but just as it was thought to be Mr. C. lifts 
his finger in token of the sanctions of his oath. He 
would say that, as to the first part of his statement, he 
thinks he cannot be in error, but possibly he may be ; he 
has spoken from his best recollection ; and as to the 
latter part of his statement, he would also say that possi- 
bly he may be mistaken ; but, if so, he could have rarely 
ever been more mistaken before. Would he swear that 
he was not mistaken ? Not that. Would he swear that 
if he was mistaken it would be the greatest mistake of 
his life ? Not that quite, because he does not recollect 
for the moment what have been liis mistakes in a life of 
some fifty years. 

A deed is shown Mr. C. with his name a witness 
thereto. Is that his signature ? Upon due inspection 
he should say it was — it bears a strong resemblance. 
Has he any doubt ? He is so far clear that, if it be not 
his autograph, it is an admirable forgery. Will he swear 
it is forgery ? By no means. Then he would swear it 
was genuine ? Not so ; but if it be not genuine, it must 
.be forgery. Which is it? It is one or the other. 
Which f He thinks he may be safe to own the hand- 
writing. 

A cane, gold-headed, is shown Mr. C., with the 
name of Zacliariali Tompkins beautifully carved thereon. 
Hid he know Mr. Tompkins ? He did. Hid he know 
his cane ? He had many times seen Mr. Tompkins with 
it, and he had the honor, in behalf of many citizens, to 
present Mr. T. the cane. Is that the cane of the 
late Mr. Zachariali Tompkins ? It appears to be. Has 
Mr. Caution any doubt in his mind that that is the 
identical cane? He would not have if Mr. Tompkins 
were alive and carrying the cane. Has Mr. C. any 


WITNESSES. 


189 


doubt now, seeing that Mr. Tompkins is dead and 
buried ? Really, there would seem to be no room for 
doubt, but lest there should be, he would not positively 
swear. 

The pedantic witness. Witnesses are born, not made, 
and the born witness is now upon the stand. The case 
has been waiting for his appearance. Other witnesses 
have radiated darkness, but light shall presently dawn. 
The case opens up the inquiry whether a certain stone- 
wall, built under a contract requiring a half face wall, 
Was in fact such a wall ? Is Mr. P. versed in the 
art and practice of stone masonry ? He fancies he is. 
Has he read the contract ? He has. Has he seen the 
wall ? He has looked at it. Whether in his opinion the 
wall, in respect of material and construction, was such a 
wall as the contract called for ? Mr. P. remarks that 
to be entirely understood it is necessary to speak of 
the different species of wall of this particular kind or 
genus , to use the better word of the botanist. There are 
three : First, the rough or boulder wall ; second, the 
half face or split and plug wall ; and third, the full face 
or high finish wall. If he should contract to build a 
rough or boulder wall, that would be one thing ; if ho 
should contract to build a half face or split and plug 
wall, that would be another thing ; if — 

‘‘'Object! 5 ’ shouts a snappish lawyer, whose knowl- 
edge of stone-walls is limited. The court, not less igno- 
rant of the subject, sustains the objection, and advises the 
witness that he is desired, as an expert, to give an answer 
pro or con to a quite simple question, which the court 
repeats substantially as above. Mr. P. observes, with 
a smile, that that was what he was about to do, and 
resumes. If he should enter into a contract to build a 
split and plug wall, he would take into consideration two 


190 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


tilings : first, what is a split and plug wall as understood 
by those versed in stone masonry, and, second, whether 
the contract in reality called for such a wall. Here Mr. 
P. takes out a book and begins, as you may say, a 
dissertation on stone-walls. The court of its own volition 
interposes. The witness must answer in direct terms the 
question whether the wall that is in the case is split and 
plug. The question admits of answer, yes or no. Mr. 
P. protests that he cannot answer it unless allowed 
to answer in his own way. Can he not say yes or no ? 
No, he cannot say yes or no as a stone-mason. Then 
Mr. P. may step down and not further burden the 
case with stone- walls that do not belong to it. The 
witness steps down, and goes to his seat, pocketing his 
book in the face of many broad smiles. 

The good witness. He is not necessarily a bonus 
homo. A bad man may be a good witness, not because 
he is bad, but because he knows how to tell what ho 
knows without telling what he ought not to tell. To say 
this does not imply that he breaks his oath by suppress- 
ing the truth in part, being sworn to tell the whole. He 
is naturally truthful. Bad men, as the word goes, some- 
times are. Good men, as the word goes, sometimes are 
not. The naturally truthful witness, which is the good 
witness, does not incumber his testimony with ir- 
relevancies and qualifications and unsaying his sayings. 
He hears the question, and answers it without flying off 
to answer questions which nobody has asked. He is not 
necessarily intelligent. The u intelligent” witness may 
be a poor one. Intelligence on the witness-stand may be 
like the much learning which makes a man mad. A 
man who can neither read nor write may be the good 
witness in a case where professors of college, doctors of di- 
vinity, attorneys-at-law, and even judges are co-witnesses 


WITNESSES. 


191 


with him. The reason is already given — he is naturally 
truthful without even knowing it. The truth is in him, 
and comes out directly without circumlocution. Truth 
never is circumlocutory. Truth is never in a hurry to 
he heard. It abides its time. Hence the good witness 
waits till the question is asked, and then does not hasten 
to answer it. But he answers it betimes, and when he 
answers he has answered. He is not restive under his 
oath. He thinks nothing about his oath. The oath is 
not a yoke about his neck. He would be just as good a 
witness unsworn as sworn. If when he has said a thing 
he is asked if he says that on his oath, he would, but for 
his intuitive perception of the impertinence, ask the 
lawyer if he is not under oath f But instead of answering 
the question by asking another, he simply says to the 
counsel, Yes. He is not conscious of helping or hurting 
the case much. He is not apt to think his testimony 
important to the issue. ’ If he thinks of himself at all, it 
rather is to know what he is summoned to court for. 
Y ery far removed he is from self-conceit, vanity, 
egotism. In short, the good witness is as unlike all 
other witnesses as Jenny Lind was unlike all other prima 
donnas before and since her time. A fashionable Hew 
York lady drawlingly said of Miss Lind, without know- 
ing how much she said, “ Why, Jenny Lind is a very 
natural singer ; but then, perhaps, she is all the better 
for that.” So the good witness is a very natural swear- 
er, but all the better for that. 


192 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


XXII. 

THE LAWYER AND THE PETTIFOGGER. 

There is a delusion abroad that the difference between 
a lawyer and a pettifogger is not much greater than the 
difference betwixt tweedledee and tweedledum. To 
such an extent does the delusion prevail, that pettifoggers 
are not unfrequently called lawyers, and vice versa. The 
author feels it his duty to dispel, so far as he may, this 
delusion. The difference is considerable. The differ- 
ence, indeed, is so pronounced that the pettifogger can 
hardly be said to have any of the ear marks of the 
lawyer, however the lawyer may sometimes wear an ear 
mark or two of the pettifogger. A clear understanding 
of the subject requires a defining of the two factors of 
the social order now under discussion. 

The lawyer is a member of the Bar. He is admitted 
into the fold of the ancient and noble profession. He is 
admitted in open court, under the formalities of law, to 
the practice of law in all the courts of lav/ in his State. 
The admission itself implies something. It implies that 
he has read some law books, got hold of some legal prin- 
ciples, has an inkling of the rules of evidence, has taken 
more or less lessons in the art of pleading, knows some- 
what about forms, recognizes the importance of forms, 
understands partly the courses of procedure, has seen the 
inside of an indubitable court-house, and is inspired with 
an ambition to learn a few things more to keep decently 
along with the class he was ambitious enough to learn 
enough to join. It further follows that he has taken an 
oath, not only to support the Constitution of his State and 
country, but another oath of import, as follows : 


THE LAWYER AND THE PETTIFOGGER. 


193 


“ I solemnly swear that I will do no falsehood, nor 
consent to the doing of any in court ; I will not wittingly 
or willingly promote or sue any false, groundless, or un- 
lawful suit, nor give aid or consent to the same ; 1 will 
delay no man for lucre or malice, but will conduct 
myself in the office of an attorney within the courts 
according to the best of my knowledge and discretion 
and with all good fidelity as well to the courts as my 
clients. So help me God.’ 5 

This oath is not a meaningless phrase. It is not 
mummery. If there be rascals who are lawyers, the 
majority are jealous of the honor of the profession, and 
are alert to hunt down the rascal who flagitiously violates 
this oath. The cases of this hunting down have been not 
uncommon. The offender, arraigned before the bar 
which he has disgraced, has been expelled from the bar 
that would no longer tolerate his presence. His example 
is an admonition. Lawyers everywhere take notice of 
it. They walk straighter that they may not suffer the 
same fate, and are prouder of their profession, which 
thus resents the sullying of its vestments. 

The pettifogger is a justice of the peace. This is the 
stock-in-trade with which he sets up business. To know 
what justices of the peace are, one needs but to look into 
a directory. Justices of the peace are there found, and, 
as they are more than the stars of heaven, so do they 
differ more in glory. The pettifogger is a moon of very 
inferior magnitude. A particle of light he never sheds, 
and what he reflects is very pale. His library consists 
of two books — the Revised Statutes, without the supple- 
ments, and “ Every Man His Own Lawyer.” These he 
never reads, but now and then opens and misreads. The 
Reports he has heard of and speaks of, but speaks in 
riddles, without knowing it. He puts not out a shingle, 


194 


TEH YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


because lie dare not. If he advertise, he advertises as 
justice of the peace, bill collector, deed-drawer, and 
writ-maker. Iiis office is his kitchen, barn, wood -pile, 
or the street corner. His ink, like the light he reflects, 
is extremely pale. There is no case so large but he is 
ready to take hold of it and put it through, and no case 
so small that it is not large enough to throw him down 
in the mire and wallop him. 

Such, as nearly as may be drawn in a space so narrow, 
is a profile view of the two personages who stand at the 
head of this chapter. The reader may think it not 
within the province of this book to draw profile views of 
these persons. It emphatically is. This is the book of 
the Judge of an inferior court. Judges of superior 
courts may write books to suit themselves. That is their 
right ; but however many books they write, they can 
never write to any purpose on this subject. Lawyers 
they may know, but pettifoggers are not within the 
range of their erudition. It is only the judge of the 
petty court who knows all about pettifoggers, because it 
is only in the petty courts that pettifoggers pettifog. 
There they abound and splash with their diminutive oars. 
There they make bold to cartoon unawares the goodly 
profession of the law. There they cannot seem to be 
rightfully excluded, because petty courts prima facie 
invite pettifogging. 

The reader need not at this point, or any point of the 
chapter, turn to his dictionary and say “ pettifogger ’ 5 
means “an inferior lawyer.” Dictionaries are not 
authority here, for their authors were not judges. The 
pettifogger is not a member of the bar , and, if not a 
member of the bar, how can he be a lawyer ? This is 
the question and the nub of it. It may be urged that 
practising within the bar of the inferior courts consti- 


THE LAWYER AND THE PETTIFOGGER. 


195 


tutes him a member of the bar, and so a lawyer. But be 
does not practise there. lie only putters, blunders, and 
flops around. Therefore, he is not a lawyer but a petti- 
fogger. 

It remains now to remark in some detail upon tlie 
business habits of this citizen of the community who is 
ever busy doing the community’s legal business. For 
singularly enough it happens that two thirds of every 
rural neighborhood hie to the pettifogger rather than 
the village attorney. The attorney’s gilt-lettered sign, 
instead of a decoy, seems to be a scare-crow. His office 
is regarded a trap, his bit of library as the evil bit of 
cheese that would betray honest people into having their 
heads snapped off. If people must go to law, if they 
must have deeds and such papers drawn, if they must 
get out of a scrape, or keep out of one that impends, 
reason two out of the rural three, Square Bungle, justice 
of the peace, is the man to consult and fee. Square 
Bungle is fair ; he does not fleece ; he takes a common- 
sense view of it ; he goes through no rigmarole ; he comes 
right to the point. That lawyer stuck up in his office 
there, with his kinks and his quirks, is after the dollars 
and cents, that’s all he cares for ; he don’t care anything 
about right between man and man. Square Bungle is 
the man. This is what they say, and accordingly Square 
Bungle is besieged and is the principal man of law of the 
town. 

He draws contracts, deeds, wills, bonds, assignments, 
powers of attorney, and all other instruments ; gives 
opinions in all matters of estate — real, personal, and 
mixed— and on all mooted questions growing out of 
municipal affairs ; writes dunning letters, collects bills, 
brings and defends suits, acts as referee, and is always 
a majority of the three men ; acts as executor, adminis- 


196 TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 

trator, and guardian ; plays the part of coroner, and tells 
the jury just what to do and not to do. In short, Square 
' Bungle passes for a very great man, and while living is 
with about two thirds of the good people of his good 
town. The other third rather get at the fact of the case 
while he is above ground, and, and if they go to law, go 
to a lawyer. But alas for Square Bungle when he comes 
to die ! The good he has done while in the flesh, if any, 
lives not after him, and, worse still, the evil is not in- 
terred with his bones. Gradually his posterity and, along 
with them, his large and admiring clientage, who 
lamented at his funeral and 'went away celebrating his 
praises, are awakened to the fact that Square Bungle 
made of life one continuous botch. It turns out, upon 
inspection of the record, that he never did anything 
right. Many of his blunderings, being of ephemeral 
nature, were so swept away by the current tide as not to 
be heard of much afterward. Among these were his 
66 writ” makings, his “ contract’ ’ drawings, and other 
such drawings. A look at these shows that he never 
touched pen to legal paper without putting something in 
that ought not to have been there and leaving something 
out that ought to have gone in ; while the awkwardness 
of the general framework of his document was such as to 
defy imitation and the obscurity such as to baffle under- 
standing. These were things, indeed, which excited rail- 
lery at Square Bungle’s expense in his day and generation ; 
but however they made the judicious grieve, they could 
not blind his numerous admirers to his positive merits as a 
man of law. He always took such a common-sense view 
of the case, saw the point, and made short work of it. 

But, as has been intimated, registries of deeds, probate 
offices, and other depositaries of that sort do not permit 
the errors of a man who draws deed and wills and 


THE LAWYER AND THE PETTIFOGGER. 


197 


administers on estates to moulder away in the grave with 
his bones, and sooner or later the ghost of Square Bungle 
is haunting all the neighborhood — ay, haunting neigh- 
borhoods afar off, insomuch that the uttermost parts of 
the earth may not be free of the spectre. Deeds by 
Square Bungle, blunderingly drawn and before him blun- 
deringly executed, are found to be making havoc of titles 
that had not dreamed of insecurity. Wills similarly 
drawn and executed are proved to have devised no 
property. Estates long ago supposed to be settled turn 
up so unadministered that administration de bonis non 
would be a more desperate undertaking than the recon- 
struction of one of his “ written contracts.” The works 
of Square Bungle are ripped up, and his children, and his 
clients’ children, and their children’s children to the 
third- and fourth generation are in a peck of bubble, 
bubble, toil, and trouble. 

Meanwhile the other third of the community, though 
they patronized the lawyer with the gilt sign and did 
what they might to escape the disaster, do not escape it. 
The leaven of Square Bungle so leavens the whole lump 
that, owing to the interchange of property and the inter- 
marriage of people, scarce a family escapes falling more 
or less into the pitfalls dug by Bungle’s pen. The petti- 
fogger’ s pen proves to have been a mighty thing. A 
sword in his hand could not have achieved more, could 
imagination depict a sword in his hand. This would not 
be easy, for he was not a man of war, but peace. Un- 
like the Master he came not to bring a sword, but peace. 
He was a justice of the peace and a peacemaker. Two 
thirds of the whole, neighborhood so declared before he 
went to the undiscovered country, and hardly disbelieved 
it long after it was discovered what a mess he made of the 
country he left behind. 


198 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


Nor would justice be done to tliis man of deeds and 
drawings should omission be made to track him into 
court and take note of his prowess there. Greater ex- 
ploits than his in the forum of justice no other man of law 
hath undertaken and performed. In truth, the com- 
pliment paid him seems not undeservedly bestowed ; he 
has a happy faculty of coming right to the point. 
W ould he make a motion ? Ink is an incubus ! He 
makes it viva voce , and has done with it. Would he 
have his witness speak out what he ought to know ? 
He beats not round the bush, but puts a leader of leaders, 
and is astonished at the village attorney’s objection. 
Would he introduce a deed ? He pulls it from his 
pocket, and says there it is in black and white, as a 
clincher, perhaps adds that he wrote it. Does he know 
what no witness knows ? He bounds to the stand and 
holds up his right hand. Must he amend his declara- 
tion ? He tells his Honor to consider it amended. Is his 
writ to be abated ? He proposes to make another on 
the spot. Is the officer’s return erroneous ? He will 
correct it for him. Are his questions objected to ? He 
had supposed the court to be a court of common-sense 
rather than “ technalities. ” Does the opposing counsel 
cite the supreme authorities ? He thinks those should 
not apply to a police court, where the parties come 
together more on an equal footing. Does defendant 
demur ? He would like to know what that means. Is 
there a set-off? u He hopes his Honor won’t take no 
notice of it, as it is only a bluff game made out of whole 
cloth.” Is his case going to pot ? Square Bungle tells 
the village attorney that he will agree to call it square 
and say no more about it. Thus does the pettifogger slash 
round. Small in the comparison is an elephant in a 
china shop. 


WHAT CAUSED THE CRIME? 


199 


Behold now an impressive difference between Mr. 
Bungle and the gilt-signed attorney. It may he best 
summed up in one word — forbearance, the forbearing 
party being £< the perked-np lawyer with his kinks and 
quirks.” Probably out of every dozen cases brought 
and tried by Mr. Bungle he would in nine be waxed but 
for the commiseration and the magnanimity of the gilt 
sign, who overlooked his shortcomings, passed by his in- 
formalities, forgave his blunders, condoned his imperti- 
nencies, and let the case slip on to judgment, when be- 
neath all the rubbish of hodge-podge and irrelevancy 
with which he had incumbered it, there seemed to be 
some meritorious claim at the bottom. The judgment, 
of course, passes for a triumph of Bungle in the mind of 
many, and lie verily thinks it so. This, this then, greater 
far than the difference betwixt tweedledee and tweedle- 
dum, is one difference, besides others here shadowed, be- 
tween the pettifogger and the lawyer — the former would 
scarce ever get his case if the latter out of kindness of 
heart did not let him have it, while the latter in any 
tussle with the former would quite invariably get his, 
whether “ the justice of the peace” consented or not. 


XXIII. 

WHAT CAUSED THE CRIME ? 

To him or her who has attentively read the foregoing 
fair specimen of a voluminous and truthful journal, the 
inquiry that calls this chapter into existence may seem 


200 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


unnecessary and impertinent. As, however, it is the 
purpose of the author to leave things not doubtful, he 
proceeds to an answer of the question which he has 
involuntarily asked, What caused the crime? Nor has 
he sooner re-asked it than he is ready to exclaim — the 
reader knows the word that answers. 

Three quarters of the crime, the writers concur in 
saying, is referable to this cause. It is scarce exaggera- 
tion to sa y four. Reckoning all the drunks, all the un- 
licensed liquor-selling, all the disturbances, nine-tenths 
of all the assaults, eight-tenths of all the murders, two- 
thirds of all the larcenies, one-half of all the burglaries, 
and fractions larger or smaller of near all other offences 
as outcome of the traffic, and it approximates to the fact 
that crime as a whole is ascribable to r-u-m. Nor is it 
believed to be a stretch of truth so to reckon. There is 
many an offence which, though appearing at the time of 
the commission entirely unconnected with the use, sale, 
or manufacture of liquor, is yet traceable to this prolific 
source of wrong and woe — r-u-m. 

So true is it that rum and riot go thus hand in hand 
that, if one watches the course of crime a long time, he 
is all but ready to protest that there is no violence to 
law and order ^from intoxicating liquor apart. Directly 
not seldom, but indirectly often, larcenies and burglaries, 
where the parties offending were sober, are found to be 
the efflux of a state of things induced by liquor. If the 
theft was inspired by poverty, the poverty was entailed 
by intemperance. If the burglar was sober in his act, 
the act was yet the offspring of inebriety. The propen- 
sities of the thief strikingly tie somehow to the training 
begotten of ardent spirit. Professional burglars and 
gamblers who go about their business with clear heads, 
and are sometimes, indeed, teetotalers, are men whose 


WHAT CAUSED THE CRIME? 


201 


inclinations had origin under the corrupting influences of 
strong drink as a beverage. Their moral sense was 
destroyed by the canker of the evil example, and their 
audacity suckled by the revelries and bedevilments of 
drunkenness. Name a gambler whose associations are 
not with the grog shop. Name a burglar who is not in 
confederacy with gamblers. How rare the murder that 
is not allied to the bottle ! When from the trial of 
Webster, if then, to the trial of Guiteau, if then, has 
there been a capital offence whose breath did not smell 
of alcohol ere the evidence was closed ? As for assaults 
and other disturbances of the misdemeanor class that do 
not import into the court- room rank odors of the bar, 
the cases are rarer than swallows in winter. 

Of the seventy-three cases of evading car-fare included 
in the foregoing table, three only were there that did 
not spring directly from drunkenness of the defendants. 
Either they had no ticket or, having one, could not find 
it, or got aboard without a dime, or took the wrong train, 
and swore their ticket proved it the right one, or were 
saucy enough to refuse and defy the conductor, whether 
with or without a ticket or the price of it, because 
drunh. 

What broils of women that do not have beer at the 
bottom ? What neglects of family that are not of the 
cup ? What processes in bastardy that do not find the 
sin in wine ? Even the trespasses and mischiefs of boys 
are the fruit often of a parental looseness ripened by in- 
dulgence. A truly sober crime-committing man, 
woman, or child is an exception on the criminal calen- 
dar. It seems to be the fatality of strong drink to betray 
its evil genius in some form, degree, manner, or color, in 
every violation of the penal code. The code, indeed, 
upon a view of its operations in respect of crimes per se, 


202 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


seems to be a contrivance of society purely for the pur- 
pose of protecting itself against the invasions of bar- 
barous tribes warring under the demoniac sceptre of 
Bacchus. 

Communities that have been able, for a consider- 
able period, to banish liquor utterly from their bor- 
ders have proved that criminal laws are quite unnecessary. 
Every member of the community being in his senses as- 
sumes that every other member is, and walks in the w T ays 
simply of common-sense, which are the ways of good 
order and neighborhood. Sobriety is the restraint as 
well as the liberty and pleasure of the people. Excesses 
are little known, because excesses are the product mainly 
of stimulation, and where there are no excesses there are 
few infringements upon personal rights. Society runs 
itself without the machinery and cog-wheelery of codes 
and constables. 


XXIV. 

THE LIQUOR LAW. 

u Thou slialt not bear false witness.” Of the statutes 
whose enforcement leads to the violation of this com- 
mandment of the Decalogue, the chief, no doubt, is the 
u liquor law.” It may be said to be a law every step 
of whose enforcement is blackened with perjurious testi- 
mony. Xo one who has had any considerable experience 
in the premises but must feel how painfully true is this 
remark. At every turn in the trial of the law we are 
confronted with the disagreeable, the appalling fact that 


THTJ LIQUOR LAW. 


203 


the effort to enforce it results in wholesale perjury. 
Measurably from the time of the first rigorous sumptuary 
enactment this has been so, but increasingly in late years 
has it been true, and more now than ever, perhaps, is it 
true that the trial of every liquor case leaves a trail of 
perjured oaths. More or less is the same thing true in 
respect of all penal statues ; but the liquor law is singu- 
larly, emphatically, and conspicuously exceptional. 

For reasons growing somehow out of the nature of the 
enactment, witnesses, whether men, women, or children, 
do not, as a rule, scruple upon the stand to bear false 
witness whenever the issue is joined to test the violation 
of this particular law. It may be said to have become a 
popular understanding with that portion of the com- 
munity liable to be summoned to the witness-stand in 
such case, that, however it be a statutory offence, it is 
neither sinful nor morally wrong to tell a lie in defence 
of a party accused of liquor-selling. No sentiment or 
popular notion of this sort can be said to exist with 
reference to any other criminal law. 

Should three or half a dozen men be summoned as 
witnesses in a case of murder or any felony, and they 
should positively deny all knowledge of the fact when it 
was notorious to the neighborhood that they were within 
the house and in the very room when and where the 
deed was committed, the community would be shocked, 
and then flame with indignation. But perjury equally 
obvious, under circumstances equally inculpatory, is 
occurring every day in liquor cases. It excites remark, 
but it makes no stir. No move is made to prosecute the 
perjury. The public expected it, and the public tolerates 
it. Why was it expected ? Why is it tolerated ? It is, 
doubtless, tolerated for the same reason that it was ex- 
pected — the public is apt to tolerate what is so common 


204 


TEH YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


and habitual as to be part and parcel of its own conduct 
and character. Too many are interested in the object of 
the perjury to make it desirable to attempt the punish- 
ment of the perjurers. 

The instances are not uncommon in which men ar 
rested for drunkenness profess and show a willing- 
ness to go to jail rather than expose the parties of 
whom they procured their liquor — men who appear to 
have no interest to subserve by the refusal, except what 
they are pleased to term a matter of honor. The in- 
stances are common in which men summoned to testify, 
whose knowledge of the law’s violation is quite unques- 
tionable, swear positively to their ignorance of the crimi- 
nating fact. The reluctance to aid in prosecutions, as 
manifested by that portion of the people who do not ap- 
pear to be party to the drink traffic, is also a towering 
obstacle to the enforcement, while the readiness with 
which the traffickers can procure sureties for their ap- 
peals among property owners, often of the substantial 
and influential class of citizens, clearly demonstrates that, 
back of the grog shops and the whole line of habitual 
topers, there is a sturdy disinclination to see the law exist, 
save as a dead letter. 

Singular to relate, where the most efficient help should 
be looked for the least is found. It is a remarkable fact 
that those loudest in advocacy of prohibitory legislation 
for the advancement of temperance are often the last 
to be relied upon for personal, practical exertions in the 
enforcement of the law. Of several hundred complaints 
against the liquor traffic received by a certain magistrate 
in a term of years, he observes that he does not remem- 
ber to have received one from a professional pro- 
hibitionist, unless the complainant was a police officer. 
He further observes that he does not remember ever to 


THE LIQUOR LAW. 


205 


have received from a professional prohibitionist, unless 
an officer, any definite information that led to the prose- 
cution of a liquor-seller. A plenty of anonymous letters 
he would receive of a prohibitory sentiment. Such 
letters, containing hints andstee-boys at A, B, C, and D, 
the officers are receiving all the time. But anonymous 
letters, as the world is aware, are emptier than blank 
cartridges. 

Before a step can be taken for the seizure of intoxicat- 
ing liquors kept contrary to law, “‘two persons of full age 
and competent to testify” must combine in a complaint. 
Hot seldom it has happened that officers have called in 
vain on avowed temperance men to join them in these 
preliminary complaints, which are at the foundation of 
the seizure process. W ith some excuse or other are they 
put off. Stated in plain words, the excuse generally 
is, “I’d rather not be brought into it.” It is, indeed, 
rare that any of the peculiar “ friends of temperance” 
are seen at the trial of a liquor case. However near 
their dwellings to the court, their faces scarce ever 
light up the scene. Ordinarily the champions of any 
special plan of work, mechanical, moral, or what not, 
are swift to attend to witness with what success the plan 
operates. The plan of prohibition is a striking exception 
to the rule. Y et the presence in court of such very re- 
spectable and moral people as the temperance advocates 
would undoubtedly be of wholesome effect upon wit- 
nesses predisposed to falsify on the side of the traffic. 
Commonly the spectators are those only who are in sym- 
pathy with the saloon-keepers and their patrons. Sup- 
pose it were known of a surety that the auditors would 
always in part be composed of those who have some cir- 
cumstantial knowledge of the matter in issue, and who, 
feeling a decided interest in the cause of truth-telling 


200 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


and law-abiding, were there as watchmen for so great a 
cause. Is it not easy to see that perjury, although still 
it might occur in liquor cases, would be far less fre- 
quent ? As it stands now, however its praises may be 
sounded from platform, and pulpit, and the housetops, 
prohibition is substantially deserted by its friends in 
nearly every pitched battle with its adversaries. 

Take for illustration a single county in the State of 
Massachusetts — a county where, perhaps, as strenuous 
exertions have been made as anywhere else in that State 
to make prohibition a success. During the existence of 
the prohibitory law proper it was so, and under the license 
law of 1875 it has been so, for in most of the towns of 
the county no licenses have been granted, and in such 
towns prohibitory legislation has, for all practical pur- 
poses, been in full force or nearly so. In all this period, 
of some twenty-five years, wholesale lying, in all the 
lower and upper courts, has been carried on in defence 
of liquor-selling. Nobody doubts it. Everybody knows 
it, or ought to know. Everybody knows too, or ought 
to know, that with due vigilance on the part of the officers 
not alone, but of those who should have co-operated with 
the officers, many of the perjurers might have been 
brought to justice and examples made to some purpose. 

Yet has there been, it is confidently believed, but one 
prosecution for perjury growing out of a liquor case. 
That was instituted by indictment a§ long ago as 1866. 
The defendant was arrested and gave bail. The case 
was continued from term to term, and finally, though 
there were three witnesses, it is said, who could have 
been relied on to prove the perjury, the indictment was 
placed on file and placed on file (where it is to-day) 
upon a numerous petition, whose signers were in large 
part avowed temperance men. 


THREE FAMOUS THINGS IN LAW. 


207 


It is this state of things the community is called upon 
to meet and face. Confronted w r ith the twofold fact 
that the law is but imperfectly enforced, and that the 
attempts to enforce it are attended by unblushing dis- 
regard for the sanctities of solemn oath, is it not high 
time that community stirred itself to enforce the law and 
punish those who perjuriously stand in the way of the 
enforcement, or repeal the law altogether ? 


XXY. 


THREE FAMOUS THINGS IN LAW. 

The presumption of innocence. It is greatly to be 
feared that the so-called presumption of innocence in 
favor of the prisoner at the bar is a pretence, a delusion, 
an empty sound. It ought not so to be, but — it is. 
Rufus Choate said that “ this presumption is not a mere 
phrase without meaning that “ it is in the nature of 
evidence for the defendant that “ it is as irresistible as 
the heavens till overcome that “it hovers over the 
prisoner as a guardian angel throughout the trial that 
u it goes with every part and parcel of the evidence 
that “ it is equal to one witness.” This is just what it 
should be, but this just what it is not. Practically it is 
of no avail whatever in the trial. The jury tread it 
under foot ; the judge the same moment he admits it in 
theory forgets it in argument. It is a dead letter. 
Nay, so far from being merely inoperative, it is not 
hazardous to say that in the trial the presumption is re- 


208 


TEN- YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


versed. By court and jury, by prosecution, police, and 
tlie public the accused is presumed guilty. Let every 
one, as he looks upon a prisoner in the dock, carefully 
inquire of himself and answer if this be not so. 

The reason is plain. The whole course of criminal 
procedure, from inception to close, is designed to shut 
out presumptions of innocence and invite presumptions 
of guilt. The secrecy of complaint-making at the 
magistrate’s office, the mysterious inquisition of the 
grand- jury room, the publicity of the arrest, the com- 
mitment to the lock-up, the demand of bail, the delay 
of trial, the enforced silence of defence till prosecution 
has done its worst, are all so many steps and strokes to 
blacken the accused before he is permitted to open his 
mouth with a syllable of evidence to break the force of 
the damaging array of circumstances. To suppose that 
the presumption of innocence, which unbiassed nature 
prompts, is not before this time choked and strangled to 
death is an absurdity too gross to dispute. 

The treatment itself of the prisoner negatives the pre- 
sumption. If he is presumed innocent, why is he 
manacled ? why is he put in jail ? why is he let out only 
on bail ? why, when he is put on trial, is he put in the 
dock ? why does he not have place with the by-standers, 
who are simply presumed innocent? The u presump- 
tion,” in the presence of such things, is a contradiction of 
terms. How can a person be presumed innocent who is 
presumably guilty ? The fact that he is restrained of 
his liberty presumes guilt. There is no other construc- 
tion to be placed on the restraint. Human nature is not 
capable of any other. Yet human nature ought to pre- 
sume innocence till the contrary is proved. "What then ? 
Shall the mode or order of proceeding against sus- 
pected violators of law be so modified as to allow human 


THREE FAMOUS THINGS IN LAW. 


209 


nature to be tlius generous ? Can it be so modified ? 
Tlie object to be attained is worthy a good deal of ex- 
periment at the risk of a good deal of havoc of old-time 
forms and proceedings. 

The reasonable doubt. It would be a happy thing for 
the triers of criminal causes if somebody should succeed 
in defining a “ reasonable doubt.” A great felicity it 
would be if only some one should portray a reasonable 
doubt beyond a reasonable doubt. Nothing is more 
glibly spoken of than this doubt, yet is there nothing 
more doubtful. Lawyers roll it as a morsel under their 
tongues and roll it off at juries and justices as if it were 
a thing to be apprehended with as much certainty as a 
stark-naked fact. But what a reasonable doubt is it is 
doubtful whether they stop to think, or, stopping, form 
any but a very doubtful opinion. Should it be a matter 
of opinion at all ? Should it not be a matter of con- 
viction ? Should not every one who is to inquire 
whether he has it, have as absolute idea of what a rea- 
sonable doubt is as he has of any other independent fact 
in the case ? If the case is to turn on the matter of 
reasonable doubt, how can it turn aright, unless the 

turning-point be ascertained and fixed beyond a reas 

beyond all question ? 

The learning of the books on this subject is vast. It 
begins with the Bible — that is to say, the book writers 
make it begin there, though it does not appear that the 
inspired writers were sufficiently inspired to hit upon the 
favorite expression. Its equivalent lawgivers, since the 
time of Moses, find in the Mosaic provision, which for- 
bade the death penalty till the crime “ be told thee, and 
thou hast heard of it, and inquired diligently, and, behold, 
it to be true, and the thin g certain” (Deut. 17 : 4). This 
is said to be the amplification of Moses as definer of the 


210 


TEH YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


doubt. Modern authorities do not seem to have done 
much better. But it is not because they have not tried. 
One author says that u the persuasion of guilt ought to 
amount to such a moral certainty as convinces the minds 
of reasonable men beyond all reasonable doubt.” But 
what is the reasonable doubt? Another says that “a 
reasonable doubt may be described by saying that all 
reasonable hesitation in the mind of the triers, respecting 
the truth of the hypothesis attempted to be sustained, 
must be removed by the proof.” Another describes it 
u as that degree of certainty upon which the jurors 
would act in their own grave and important concerns.” 
This seems to approach nearer a solution, and resembles a 
definition once heard in a charge to a jury. The judge 
who gave it is admittedly one of the ablest and clearest- 
headed jurists who ever sat upon the bench. He is the 
man whom Bufus Choate called “ one of the ablest 
minds of the State.” As nearly as memory serves, his 
words were as follows : 

“ Just what a reasonable doubt is, gentlemen, it is not 
quite easy to say ; but you are practical men, and 1 in- 
struct you that you should be satisfied of the defendant’s 
guilt to that degree of certainty which you would require 
for your guidance in acting decisively in any grave matter 
of your own within such time as is ordinarily given to a 
jury for deliberation in the case.” Allowing this to be 
right instruction, is it not probable that many, very many, 
are convicted without proof beyond a reasonable doubt ? 

The burden of jo roof . 

This is another expression that should have a more 
fixed meaning. Like all other expressions used familiarly 
in discourse, it loses force and weight by its common- 
ness. It plays a windy, wordy part in all argumentation 
on questions of fact. To the mind of the average hearer 


THREE FAMOUS THIHGS IH LAW. 


211 


it assumes tlie likeness of a harmless sort of puff ball, 
tossed hither and thither by cunning lawyers to mystify 
the case and the hearer, and, for about the same reason, 
the trier comes to treat it as not of much account. How 
often does the juror give it serious thought that the 
plaintiff is weighted with a burden which the defendant 
is not — that having asserted a thing he should show it to 
be fact by a preponderance of the evidence ? Many 
reason that assertion must be true, otherwise it would 
not have been asserted. Some regard ipse dixit demon- 
stration. They look upon denial as despair. To them, 
he who denies seems to be in a fix. They never get the 
better of the first impression of the first word. But the 
old Roman rule — the proof devolves on him who 
declares, not on him who denies — is the American rule, 
and there is no rule that ought to be more rigidly 
enforced in court or out of court. A righteous render- 
ing of it would be, Let him who cannot make good what 
he would assert, hold his peace or hold forth at his peril. 
Then there would be less holding forth. There is too 
much holding forth. Too much there is of heedless, 
wanton allegation and accusation of a legal sort and of 
all sorts. Rights are rated too low. Reputation is 
reckoned too cheap. It is painful to relate that the law 
holds reputation in very cheap estimation. Criminal 
procedure everywhere is a standing invitation to attack 
it at the public expense, and civil procedure affords no 
adequate remedy when it is attacked and damaged. A 
suit for libel or slander, however well grounded in law, 
generally leaves the aggrieved man worse off than when 
he invoked the law’s aid. Before he can get a trial the 
slander has done its worst, and before he can get a ver- 
dict he lias spent thrice the money the law gives him to 
right the wrong he has suffered. 


TEH" YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


212 


XXVI. 

APPEALS. 

The popular idea is that the judgment of the appellate 
court must be right, and if that reverses the judgment 
of the lower court, the latter ought to hang its head 
pretty low. Possibly ; but before accepting this popular 
idea, it may be well to take counsel of another equally 
popular — circumstances alter cases. 

Let it be assumed that the upper court is right and 
the lower wrong, when, with the same evidence in the 
same case before both, the superior reverses the judg- 
ment of the inferior tribunal. Until the established order 
of thought and logic be revolutionized, such, doubtless, 
in fairness should be the assumption. But then it is to 
be asked, How rarely is it true that the same evidence in 
the same case 2s before the higher court which was before 
the lower ? So rarely is it so that it is all but safe to say 
that the instance never occurs. Hot to speak of the 
difference in the situation of the case in the one place 
and the other, by which it takes color and character from 
the surrounding influence and circumstances, in the 
court below by the freshness of the event, the immediate 
jar of the neighborhood, and a knowledge quite direct of 
the parties, and the absence of these things, with some 
advantage, perhaps, for a clearer view of' the case, in the 
court above — passing over these matters, how seldom is 
all the original testimony for the prosecution carried to 
the appellate court, while how often it happens that the 
testimony of the defence is there enlarged and strength- 
ened. Criminal cases only are, of course, here spoken 


APPEALS. 


213 


of. As for civil suits, they are a tug of war between man 
and man, and no danger but each will look out for his 
evidence, whatever the tribunal he needs to spread it be- 
fore. 

Criminal appeals are taken for various causes. The 
causes for which they are oftenest taken may be named 
in order as follows : 

1. Because it is hoped that between the time of appeal 
and the future trial witnesses for the government may 
.be tampered with, gotten out of the way, or may die. 

2. Because it is known that between the appeal and 
the next trial excitement will subside, much will be for- 
gotten, and the sense of public wrong will somewhat fade 
out. 

3. Because the appeal gratifies the defendant’s burst 
of resentment against the complainant, the officer, or the 
court. 

4. Because it is honestly thought that the judgment is 
unjust. 

5. Because the defendant would gain time to pay the 
fine and costs. 

When taken for the last cause the appeal is commonly 
withdrawn ; so this class of appeals may be dismissed 
from the account. When taken for either of the other 
causes, the sureties are no sooner found than the defend- 
ant, with his counsel, who nine times out of ten has 
heard all the evidence below, goes to work to rebuild and 
improve his defence, and break dowrn as much as may be 
the prosecution. On the other hand, the government 
side, oftener than otherwise, is left to take care of itself. 
The officer who has it in charge is not unfrequently 
without experience, with little or no acquaintance at the 
shire town, with the district-attorney, or the ways of the 
upper court, on all which things much depends. 


214 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


The really aggrieved party, assuming a grievance on 
the affirmative side, whether an individual or com- 
munity, is quite out of the list of wmrking influence 
from the hour the appeal is effected. If the prosecuting 
officer be experienced in his business, the prosecution is 
to that extent fortunate. But when this happens the 
government’s case is weighted with disadvantages not 
known to the defence. Allowing its witnesses are not 
run off, corrupted, or dead, an allowance seldom to be 
made in whole, their testimony is apt to be less full, 
pointed, and direct, for the reason that time is so apt to 
moderate the feelings of persons and incline them to spare 
rather than convict. Then, with few exceptions to the 
rule, the district-attorney takes the case up at random 
out of a crowded docket, knowing next to nothing about 
it and with no time for consultation before the jury is 
sworn. The evidence at times is put in out of order and 
too often without eliciting very material facts through 
ignorance of what the witness might and would testify 
to if his attention were rightly directed. If for either, 
a part, or all of the reasons indicated the evidence fails 
to make out a clever showing, the district-attorney 
weakens in his argument, and practically abandons his 
case, claiming in his looks, if not words, that the re- 
sponsibility is not with him, but with the misguided 
magistrate who first entertained such a complaint and 
then pronounced such a judgment. 

To the foregoing should be added the importunity and 
influence of defendant’s counsel, based upon political, 
social, or personal grounds, by which the prosecuting 
attorney or prosecuting officer is occasionally induced, in 
consideration of a plea of guilty and avoidance of trial, to 
favor a reduction of penalty, or place the case on file 
upon payment of costs, or, perad venture, to enter a 


APPEALS. 


215 


nolle prosequi ; in either of which events the defendant 
goes out of court with an air of triumph. 

If now we follow the defence from the time of appeal 
to the day of final judgment, it will be found that when 
a lawyer has it in hand, as most generally happens, the 
defence suffers little or nothing from laches, whatever the 
delay of trial. The longer the delay the better for the 
defendant. But though the delay should be only to the 
next term of the appellate court, which on the average 
would be, say, two months, ample opportunity is 
afforded the defence to exercise its arts in fortifying 
itself and enfeebling the adversary. 

It is a secret too open to be questioned that the 
attempt is not unfrequently made to coax and wheedle 
government witnesses into a tender mood toward the 
defendant, and nearly always with more or less success. 
If one be too conscientious to swear less than the whole 
truth, he may not scruple to be waited upon opportunely 
by a physician, whose certificate of disability shall excuse 
his non-attendance. Or if he be too scrupulous to be 
sick, or the physician be too scrupulous to have him so, 
he may be prevailed upon to be conveniently out of the 
reach of summons, since it is matter of common knowl- 
edge that the recognizance a witness enters into is matter 
rather of form, a proceeding upon it being rarer than a 
four-leaf clover sprig. 

By these methods, one or the other of them, or two 
or more of them combined, is the government’s case 
frequently impaired and imperilled, while the defendant’s 
is as often correspondingly broadened and braced by 
additional testimony and the drill of witnesses. It would 
be a novelty, not to say an infamy, to find a prosecuting 
attorney in the lobby drilling the government witnesses 
in the part they are presently to act on the witness- 


216 


TEJT YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


stand ; but what more common at criminal sessions than 
to find the lobbies drill-grounds for defendant witnesses 
and tlie defendant’ s attorney the drill master ? 

These things, therefore, all considered, the wonder is, 
not that the judgments of inferior courts are oftentimes 
mitigated or reversed upon appeal, but that this does not 
more generally occur. The effect of reversal or of sen- 
tence lighter than below is worthy attention. If the 
accpiittal be right or the reduced penalty conform better 
to the offence, the effect must be as good as justice 
itself. But if the acquittal be opposed to the fact or the 
punishment as lightened be an error of leniency, it is not 
difficult to see that the effect must be demoralizing and 
otherwise costly. 

1. It encourages immediately in the neighborhood of 
the offence a spirit of lawlessness, the logical conclusion 
of the offender and his associates being that he committed 
no offence after all, or, if an offence, not so much of an 
one as was supposed. In this conclusion the community 
in general to some extent share. 

2. It weakens, not alone among habitual law-breakers, 
but all others, the respect in which, for grave public 
reasons, the lowest order of courts and the officers attend- 
ing thereon should be held by the people ; by which is 
meant that degree of proper respect which is due to 
public servants, who act presumably from right mo- 
tives. 

3. It multiplies the appeal cases ; a single instance of 
an appellant’s triumph in a verdict of “ not guilty,” ora 
scaled-down penalty being sometimes enough to vocalize 
a whole township with the argument that justice is not 
to be had save upon appeal. 

4. It swells enormously the Commonwealth’s bill of 
costs, since in no other single way does that bill attain 


THE GOVERNMENT’S ADVANTAGES. 217 

siicli proportions as through the channel of criminal ap- 
peals. 

Accordingly, it would seem to be not an ill-considered 
proposition which has more than once been made in the 
Legislature, that there be appointed State attorneys to 
take charge from the commencement of all prosecutions 
in the courts. At first blush this might seem a great 
expenditure, extravagant, and unwise. It is scarcely to 
he doubted that in the reach of results it would be a 
measure of public economy, and contribute in promoting 
the ends of justice and the good order and welfare of the 
State. 


XXYIL 

THE GOVERNMENT’S ADVANTAGES. 

Upon the surface, but on the surface only, it would 
seem to be right that in criminal prosecutions the govern- 
ment should have the open and the close — the opening 
of the case to produce the first impressions and the clos- 
ing argument or last word to confirm them. This right 
or rather custom may be supposed to have had origin in 
the circumstance that the government awarded to the 
prisoner what has before been seen to be an empty thing, 
the presumption of innocence, and the further circum- 
stance that the government assumed the burden of proof, 
which may as readily be seen to be little better than the 
burden of a blown bladder. The plain truth is that, 
whatever the burdens government may affect to be bur- 
dened with in convicting the accused, it has a decided 


218 


TEK YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


and quite uninterrupted advantage over him from the 
inception to the end of the prosecution. The radical 
truth is that, whatever the tenure of the judges and 
whatever the other safeguards placed around them, the 
government owns the courts, and expects to have its 
own way in them. Nor is it far from truth to say that 
it does. 

The ostentatious use of the phrases, “ the burden of 
proof,” “ the presumption of innocence,” u the proof 
of guilt beyond reasonable doubt,” as made in the text- 
books, at the bar and on the bench, is insubstantial as 
fanfaronade when the modes of criminal procedure are 
fairly and fully viewed. As seen too often in practice, 
the ravings of J elfreys were scarcely other than an un- 
disguised declaration of what is the fact now as well as 
in his time — that these phrases are a thin concealment 
only of a determined purpose by the government to con- 
vict its man every time. Jeffreys shut off hope to begin 
with. Does not u government” excite hope only to 
defer it to the making of the heart sick ? If the 
government presumes an accused person innocent, why 
does it ask him whether he is guilty ? If the burden of 
jn’oof is upon the government, why does it not proceed 
to discharge it at once ? What is the arraignment but a 
covert menace that, if the accused does not own up, it 
will be worse for him ? This not seldom is the admis- 
sion or rather the confession of the government, which 
condescendingly consents to the court imposing a lighter 
penalty in consideration of the arraigned party’s plea of 
guilty. As if a man, presumed innocent, should be 
worse off for insisting upon the proof of his guilt ! It is 
the commonest thing for a court to be guided by the 
prosecuting attorney in sentencing a convict ; but who 
ever knew a court to be guided to leniency when the 


THE GOVERNMENT’S ADVANTAGES. 


219 


government was pulling in the opposite direction ? Who 
ever knew a court to inflict a light punishment at the 
urgency of defendant when the government demanded 
a severe one ? 

It is considerable to say, but unfortunately truth, that 
the State has a powerful advantage in having the court 
lean always to its side. If the case be before a “ trial 
justice,” where emolument is dependent on the number 
of his cases, it is undeniably so, because the more he 
convicts the better will he please the officers who bring 
him the cases. Every lawyer who has practised before 
country squires knows this, as does every one else who 
has at all watched the thing. If the case be before a 
jury, the leaning governmentward, though less selfish, is 
not less positive. It is believed that the jury often lean 
without really knowing it, but they always lean. The 
feeling that operates so much with everybody operates 
with them — the feeling that it is a little safer to be on 
the stronger side. Then, the sense of authority with 
which the sound of u government” impresses the mind 
is a constant influence on the panel. Jurors, too, are not 
seldom swayed by some supposed self-interest, without 
admitting it as such, treating the matter of justice as a 
kind of worldly affair. Their discourses, as sometimes 
overheard, or afterward by them reported, have looked 
frugally to the question of cost to the government in the 
event of acquittal. “ Let’s fix it so as to make the State 
whole,” say they, or words to that effect. 

As for police courts, whose judges are paid by stated 
salaries, and who, therefore, would seem to have no 
motive to favor one side more than another, a confession 
must be made. These magistrates, thus lifted into an 
atmosphere of serene “ independence,” alas! are also 
human. The fear of the State, be it confessed, is ever 


220 


'Elf YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


before tlieir eyes ; for as tlie State made them, it can 
unmake, and assuredly will, if things are not about so and 
so. These things do not relate chiefly to “ good be- 
havior” either. They extend mostly to such legislative 
inquiries as, How many cases does he, Judge Doe, have 
to keep him busy ? How much does he pay into the 
treasury in fines ? How much does he draw out as “ costs 
accrued ?” In a word, how comparatively profitable to 
its creator is that little court down there at Cranberry 
Centre ? Such are the queries that shape the argument 
whether the court should better be abolished or retained. 

How, as said, a police judge, though paid by salary, is 
human, and it is not in human nature for him to like to 
be legislated out of office. He prefers to stay in till he 
gets ready to resign or die, if get ready he ever doth. 
Accordingly, exert himself how he may to stand up and 
be a judex Ionics , he will infallibly crook the pregnant 
hinges of the knee that the thrift of legislative approval 
may follow fawning. lie will habitually aim to lengthen 
out his docket, knowing that it will be legislatively 
quizzed as an “ annual return;” he will incline grasp - 
ingly to fine-taking, knowing that his quarterly pay- 
ments into the treasury will be scanned ; he will hesitate 
to acquit the innocent lest he charge to the State a fee 
bill the defendant might pay ; he will even now and 
then placate biassed officers, who so contribute to the 
court’s business, by taking their estimate of the evidence 
instead of its own. 

This truly is a humiliating confession to make, but it 
is due to candor that it be made. The State demands a 
revenue from its lower courts, and is not satisfied unless 
it can point to quite a pile of it ; whereas it ought not to 
think of such a thing as revenue. It scarcely does think 
of it in the case of the higher courts, where with more 


THE GOVERNMENT’S ADVANTAGES. 221 

reason it might. To maintain a tribunal in the name of 
justice with a view to gain, is monstrous mockery. 
What is it but a lust to pocket money out of the dis- 
tresses of the people ? This, however, is what is done 
by the establishment of a court whose existence is in any 
degree made contingent on the number of its docketed 
cases and the amount of its collected fines. Such a court 
is compelled, by the very terms of its appointment, to stir 
up criminal business, to magnify neighborhood broils 
into grave violations of law, and to fan the flame of 
domestic discord generally. Yet such is the motive- 
spring that more or less moves all the lower courts of 
this State and every State. In a notable instance the 
chief tests applied in regulating the salaries of judges and 
clerks were, Ilow many cases does the court return per 
annum ? How much does it pay into the treasury ? 
Some officials who had fondly dreamed that they would 
serve the community better by having 100 cases only 
where they might have had 150, though spending more 
time in avoiding the additional fifty than they would 
have spent in trying them, and by avoiding them better 
conserving the public peace, were given to understand 
that such services were not and would not be appreciated ; 
that what the State wanted was cases and broil-stirring , 
and as much cash as possible out of the hubbub. With 
the spirit of authority thus lashing the courts into busi- 
ness, who shall say that the Commonwealth does not 
expect an advantage in every trial of its strength with a 
defendant, and that it does not also have it. 

The treatment of the accused — allusion to which has 
before been made — from the time of the arrest to the 
conclusion of the trial, tends powerfully to negative the 
vaunted presumption of innocence, and load him with 
impressions of guilt. Especially is this true in a capital 


222 


TEtf YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


case, where most it would seem the presumption should 
prevail, though in strict justice the presumption should 
not there prevail more than in a misdemeanor. A 
trained lawyer to prosecute every case in the higher 
courts is an advantage which the government has over 
more than half the defendants whose cases are tried in 
these courts. Probably not more than one third of the 
defendants there have any counsel at all. The mere fact 
of their being without counsel makes against them. 
Nobody is so unfortunate in court as he who seems to 
have no friends. The power of the State to compel the 
attendance of witnesses is another signal advantage. 
The State need not pay its witnesses in advance. A 
defendant must, or have none. Why this distinction ? 
Many persons charged witli crime are unable to make a 
defence by reason of poverty. They cannot procure 
witnesses for want of means, and never was government 
known to furnish them means to prove, if they might, 
that they had not violated its laws, capital cases perhaps 
excepted. 

If the continuance of a case is asked by a defendant 
the better to make clear his defence, invariably almost 
the court consults what it terms the interests of the State 
rather than the citizen — speaks of the cost it will be to 
the Commonwealth to keep its witnesses in attendance, 
concurs generally with the prosecuting attorney, and says, 
“ Let the trial proceed.” As if it were not the highest 
interest of the Commonwealth to find out whether an 
accused citizen be rightly accused. As if a court should 
sit to economize for the State more than to satisfy the 
State that it had no just cause to make economy neces- 
sary. 

The opening and the closing of a case in court, 
whether before the judge or the jury, are great ad van- 


THE GOVERNMENT’S ADVANTAGES. 


223 


tages to tlie party having them. To have the first and 
the last word in any controversy to be settled by a 
tribunal, is to have the best end of the rope. Every- 
body, of whatever grade of intellect, feels this and knows 
it. For nothing will lawyers more strenuously contend 
than for the right to open and close, when the right is in 
dispute. This important privilege in all criminal cases 
the government has arrogated to itself — the word is not 
too strong — has arrogated to itself. Nor has it rendered 
to the parties against whom it exercises the privilege 
any equivalent. The consideration it pretends to have 
parted with, variously styled the presumption of inno- 
cence, the burden of proof, etc., are not good and valu- 
able. They are rather a delusion and a snare. Indeed, 
it is questionable whether it would be in the power of 
the government to render any really sufficient equivalent 
for the immense advantage it has in the open and close 
of every criminal trial. The government has advantages 
enough when it exercises the power of accusing, arrest- 
ing, and incarcerating a man and holding him, with a 
cloud of public suspicion about his head, till it gets ready, 
some time in the uncertain future, to try him. To add 
to these and the other advantages here glanced at, the 
advantage of bringing a man into court handcuffed from 
jail and hitting him the first blow before his “ peers” and 
then the last, and all in the name of the government, by 
whose fiat the court exists and whose money pays the 
peers — what is this but to knock a man down and tell 
him to get up if he dare ? 


224 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


XXVIII. 

A DEFECT OF THE SYSTEM. 

A grave defect of the judicial system in all the States 
is that so many cases are tried in so many courts without 
settling anything as matter of law. The large, very 
large majority of all cases, civil and criminal, are 
docketed and disposed of in the lower courts — that is, 
the trial-justice, district, police, and municipal courts. 
Of these a certain percentage, very small, go to the 
superior courts upon appeal, and of the appeal cases and 
all others a very limited number go to the Supreme 
Court upon exceptions to determine disputed points of 
law. When a case thus reaches the last tribunal and re- 
ceives adjudication, the public may be said to be in- 
formed as to the law so far as that particular case may 
involve a legal principle, a rule of statutory construction, 
or the like. But so rare are the instances of this 
authoritative adjudication, by comparison with the ques- 
tions daily arising for answer out of the ever fresh swarm 
of cases, that the beacon lights are altogether too few to 
admit of a navigation anything but problematical, if not 
perilous. As for the largest portion by far of practical 
questions of law growing out of our teeming civilization 
and more teeming legislation, the public are continually 
at sea, beating and drifting about in a state of painful 
uueertitude what rocks to avoid, what shoals to shun, 
what port to make for as a haven of legal safety from 
the winds of warring opinions alike of lawyers, laymen, 
and judges. 

The Superior Court, contrary to what the name im- 


A DEFECT OF THE SYSTEM. 


225 


plies, lias no superiority over the inferior courts in 
authoritatively determining law questions. As every in- 
ferior court decides for the time each new question aris- 
ing before it, and that is the end of it as matter of law, 
unless appeal be taken, so the Superior Court, sitting 
for every county, decides for the time the new question 
before it, and unless the judge’s ruling be excepted to 
and tested in the Supreme Court, it has no force binding 
upon the public beyond the ruling of an inferior magis- 
trate. The popular impression is that when some case is 
finally disposed of in the Superior Court, the question of 
law therein involved has found a definite settlement. 
This is what the people are apt to think, and what the 
people think is apt to be what ought to be the fact. It 
happens, however, that the people’s thought in this 
matter is singularly at variance with the actual state of 
things. To all intents and purposes the ruling of a 
Superior Court judge, unless excepted to, is precisely as 
ephemeral and inoperative for all public uses as is the 
ruling, unless appealed from, of never so inferior a 
court. Not much more in one court than another, if any 
more, is there preserved any record of the case, showing 
the state of facts from which it may appear how the 
question of law raised took form, on what ground it was 
decided, or whether it was decided at all. The rulings of 
the Superior Court, save as embalmed in the exceptional 
cases of exceptions , are quite as transitory as if written in 
water. In other words, the court is, in the technical 
sense, scarcely more a court of law than the pettiest 
tribunal of the State. 

An able lawyer of Boston, in addressing a jury, once 
said : “ I don’t know how this judge may rule, but 1 
know how another judge of this court (Superior) has 
ruled on the same question.” The language seemed 


226 


TEN' YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


disrespectful, but the judge evidently felt that the foun- 
dation for the remark was too good to quarrel with the 
bluntness of it. 

Nor is the absence of record relating to the matter of 
the court’s ruling much, if at all, cured by the memory 
of men. The court is now and then quoted with more 
or less accuracy by the bar and the bystanders. But 
the quotation, by whomever made, has little or no 
weight with bar or bench for reasons well understood by 
every lawyer and other intelligent citizen. These rea- 
sons are that what the court may rule to-day in Bucking- 
ham County it may be overruling the same hour in 
Buckminster ; that the absence of all consensus of judg- 
ment by the judges on questions not yet adjudicated, but 
probable to rise, strips their opinions of the force they 
would otherwise have ; and further, that it is too 
familiar knowledge that the presiding judge often rules 
jpro forma , without deliberation, merely to transfer the 
question to the Supreme Court. Accordingly, the 
opinion of a Superior Court judge carries no more weight 
than that of any good fair lawyer, and, as the number is 
very large of good fair lawyers, Superior Court opinions 
are of that depreciated value which always results from 
excessive supply. 

It is submitted that this state of things is entirely un- 
worthy of what purports to be a superior court with a 
bench of a dozen judges presumably learned in the law. 
A dozen such candles not hid under a bushel, but candle- 
sticked and lighted on the bench, ought to outshine by 
many times a dozen lawyers at the bar in discovering to 
the people what is the law of the land. It is a disheart- 
ening, not to say distressing, fact that stretches and 
winds through all the counties of all the States, that no 
man, in respect of things not absolutely adjudicated, 


A DEFECT OF THE SYSTEM. 


227 


knows wliat Judge Doc of tlic Superior Court will say 
because his associate, Judge Doe, has spoken. Judge 
Doe may do justice in saying his say, but for aught that 
the public legally knows, Judge Doe, who does exactly 
the opposite thing, may rule right. Whether it be 
better to sue or not to sue, to appeal or not to appeal, 
that is the question which everybody, who feels his 
rights are in issue, knows will not be fully set at rest till 
he wades through the delay, expense, and vexation of a 
Superior Court litigation on to the tribunal of last resort. 
However small or inconsequential the question, if it be 
legal, there is nothing in the sovereign Commonwealth 
to settle it this side the Supreme Court. Before the 
portals of that august tribunal swing open, one must in 
a journey of at least a year’s duration hack his way 
through a Superior Court trial at the expense of a good 
deal of axe-sharpening, chopper-hiring, and flesh-tearing. 
When the oracle is reached he must be liberal in the 
burning of incense, and piously sacrifice upon the altar 
divers fee-bill bullocks ere he presumes a consultation ; 
and when he has consulted he must depart in a serene 
patience and abide the oracle’s response. This may or 
may not be given before the house in dispute is burned 
down, and the insurance company has failed, and one or 
both parties to the suit are dead. All this and much 
more, we are bound to assume, is in exact conformity to 
that clause of the Constitution which declares : 

“ Every subject of the Commonwealth ought to obtain 
right and justice freely, and without being obliged to 
purchase it ; completely, and without any denial ; 
promptly, and without delay ; conformably to the 
laws.” 


228 


TEN YEARS A POLICE COURT JUDGE. 


XXIX. 


THE CLOSE. 

A parting word seems appropriate. All books have 
concluding chapters. Xo reason occurs wlij this book 
should be an exception. It is true that the concluding 
chapter rarely adds anything to the stock of the book 
more than the preface, the introductory chapter, and 
oftentimes not a few of the intervening chapters them- 
selves. But it is highly important to keep pace with 
fashion in literature as well as in other matters. Book- 
writers feel that if they should not write sundry pages of 
finality, it would be the finality of their book-writing. 
They feel that they would be like a host who should 
speed the parting guest without shaking hands or making 
a bland bow. ec Call again” is the speech, uttered or 
unexpressed, of the host’s adieu. The concluding chap- 
ter is another form of saying the same thing — that is, 
“ Pray, do not forget me,” the prayerful author having a 
dark suspicion, mayhap, that he ought to be forgotten. 
The author who is now bowing out his readers shares 
with authors in general this peculiar feeling, which 
authors in general do assuredly feel. To suppose other- 
wise would be to suppose him what lie is not — an ex- 
traordinary man— a man entirely unconscious of the 
possible guilt of a great impertinence, the impertinence 
of imposing on the world another book. To be insen- 
sible to this idea would argue in any author a depravity 
which ought to consign him to a sad oblivion. 

For one to think without blushing that he is the man 
or she is the woman to make a book which this book- 


THE CLOSE. 


229 


ridden world actually needs — verily, this is an extrava- 
gance not to be condoned, and nobody, hardly anybody, 
but knows it. Hence concluding chapters. Hence the 
beg-pardons of prefaces and other introductions. Hence 
this chapter. A suspicion amounting to a settled and 
very painful impression creeps over the author that he 
ought to deprecate and placate, as he may be able, the 
wrath of a longsuffering, book-afflicted public. Even 
Solomon said, “ Of making many books there is no 
end.” What would he have said had he been arrayed 
like one of these of the nineteenth century ! The author 
trembles at the thought of what the wise man would 
have said could he have been in the flesh and have seen 
him seriously contemplating the superfluity of this pro- 
duction. It is not hazardous to aver that he would have 
deemed it due to the glory of his former wisdom to 
demand a meek apology for the contemplation alone. 
IIow then shall the apology be adequate for the deed 
itself ! It, however, remains to make it, and that it may 
be made in phrase as delicate and conciliatory as practi- 
cable, the language is borrowed of another. 

“ My task is done, and what is writ is writ ; would it 
were worthier !” 


THE END. 














, 


















. 














100 


ALPHONSE DAUDET’S FAMOUS BOOK. 

LEVANGELISTE. 

A ROMANCE. 

By ALPHONSE DAUDET. 

Founded on the Doings of the Salvation Army, 

“ L’IiIvangeliste ” is far out of the beaten track of fiction, and its originality 
is supplemented by intense power and interest ; in fact, it would be difficult to find a 
romance in which the interest is more absorbing. Nor is this interest the result, 
as is deplorably the case in so much French fiction, of highly spiced sentimental- 
ity or daring vulgarity. The book is clean, wholesome, refined, and is, moreover, 
founded on fact. It treats mainly of the acts and methods of that world-famous 
organization, the Salvation Army, and the heroine, Eline Ebsen, is a Dane, living 
with her mother in the Scandinavian colony in Paris. She is on the point of being 
married, and a happy life seems in store for her, but suddenly a disturbing influence 
appears in the shape of Madam Autheman, a wealthy banker’s wife, who is given 
to making religious converts. This woman hires Eline to translate some prayer- 
books, and during the execution of the w’ork the girl becomes filled with her 
patron’s enthusiasm. She breaks with her suitor and deserts her mother to servo 
as a preacher in the Salvation Army. This is the introduction to one of the mo.d 
thrilling novels of the day, and from thence onward the plot absolutely enthralls 
the reader, each succeeding link riveting the chain the tighter. The incidents are 
strong in the highest degree, very dramatic, and pervaded by a lurid light of mysti- 
cism which augments the effect a tbou3and-fold. The gradual development in the 
young heroine of the. fatal passion for proselytizing people is depicted as Alphonse 
Daudet alone of all the French novelists can depict an idea, and the struggles of 
the poor mother to recover her deluded daughter from the grasp of the rich Authe- 
mans, her vain appeals to the feeling of pity and the unsympathetic law, touch the 
heart of the reader to an extent the pen cannot depict, all the more so when one 
learns how the novel came to be written. Daudet had often observed the sad face 
of the lady who gave lessons in German to his eldest son. Surprising her one day, 
with tears in her eyes, he induced her to narrate the causes of her woe. The story 
of the woman forms the basis of this novel, in which she figures as Mme. Ebsen. 


WHAT CRITICS THINK OF DAUDET. 

HENRY JAMES, Jr., says, in the Century Magazine: “We have no one, 
either in England or America, to oppose to Alphonse Daudet. The appearance of 
a new novel by this admirable genius is to my mind the most delighiful literary 
event that can occur just now ; in other words, Alphonse Daudet is at the head 
of his profession.” 

JULES CLARETIE, the eminent French w’riter, says: “To-day Alphonse 
Daudet has airived at the full measure of his renown. In fiction he is proclaimed 
the master. ... Is the most delicate, the most sympathetic, the most charming of 
all our contemporary w riters of romance. . . . The poet of romance.” 

JOAQUIN MILLER says, in a letter, April 3, ’84 : “ I had rather be Alphonse 
Daudet than any other living man now in literature, except two; one of these is 
Victor Hugo, and the other is— Joaquin Miller.” 

Paper Cover, 50 cents. Cloth, $1.00. 

This is the ONLY Complete Edition of the Story published in 
America. About one half of the Story is published in one of the cheap 
Libraries of the day— a mere fragment. 


107 

THE FORTUNES OF RACHEL. 

A New Novel. By Edward Everett Hale. i2rao, paper, 25c.; cloth, $1. 


CHRISTIAN UNION N. Y ‘ Probably no American has a more devoted 
constituency of readers than Mr Edward Everett Hale, and to all these his 
latest story, * The Fortunes of Rachel, will bring genuine pleasure. Mr. Hale 
is emphatically a natural writer; he loves to interpret common things and to 
deal with average persons. He does this with such insight, with such noble 
conception of lite and of his work, that he discovers that profound interest 
which belongs to the humblest as truly as to the most brilliant forms of life. 
. . This story is a thoroughly American novel, full of incident, rich in 

strong traits of character, and full of stimulating thought; it is wholesome and 
elevating.” 

BOSTON JOURNAL. “ The virtue of the book is the healthful, encouraging, 
kindly spirit which pervades it, and which will help one to battle with adverse 
circumstances, as, indeed, all Mr. Hale’s stories have helped.” 

NEW YORK JOURNAL OF COMMERCE. “A purely American story, 
original all through, and Rachel is one of the pleasantest and most satisfactory 
ofheroine<. She is a girl of the soil, unspoiled by foreign travels and con- 
ventionalities. After surfeiting on romances whose scenes are laid abroad, it 
is delightful to come across a healthy home product like this.” 

BOSTON GLOBE. “ Every one knows that Mr. Hale is the prince of story- 
tellers.” 


MU MU, AND THE DIAR Y OF A SUPERFLUOUS MAN. 

Two powerful novels descriptive of serf and upper-class life in Russia. 

By Ivan Turgenieff. 121110, paper, 15c.; cloth, extra paper, 75c. 

N. Y. TRIBUNE. ** His characters are vital; they suffer with a pathos that 
irresistibly touches the reader to sympathy. T hose who would write in the 
same vein get merely his admirable manner, full of reserve, of self-restraint, 
of joyless patience; but while under this surface with Turgenieff lie throbbing 
arteries and quivering flesh, his imitators offer us nothing more than lay figures 
in whose fortunes it is impossible to take any lively interest. They represent 
before us only poor phases of modern society, while Turgenieff has explained 
to us a nation and shown the playof emotions that are as old as the world and 
as new as the hour in which they are born.” 

LITERARY WORLD , Boston. “These two stories , . are unquestion- 
ably to be ranked among their author’s masterpieces. . . * Mumu ' will 

bear a great amount of study ; it marks out a whole method in fiction.” 

THE MANHATTAN. “One of the most powerful and touching pictures of 
slave-liie in all literature.” 

LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE, Phila. “There are some half dozen of Tur- 
genieff’s short stories absolutely perfect each in its way, but none, perhaps, 
quite so exquisitely as Mumu ’ shows the great artist’s power to transfigure to 
our eyes the tenderness, passion, agonies, which lie beyond speech and almost 
beyond sign, in the silent heart of a strong, simple man.” 

CRITIC AND GOOD LITERATURE, N. Y. •* How little material genius 
requires for making a * good thing.’ Turgenieff’s ' Mumu ’ is only the sketch 
of a deaf mute and a dog, but how beautifully told 1 There are touches of 
infinite gentleness as well as of skill.” 

FUNK & WAQNALLS, Publishers, 10 & ia Dey St., New York. 


108 

HIMSELF AGAIN. 

A New Novel. By J. C. Goldsmith, dido, paper, 25 cts.; cloth, extra 

paper, $1.00. 


COMMENTS OF THE PRESS. 

THE BOSTON GLOBE. “ Its peculiar qualities are its delineation of eccen- 
tric character which is notabiv free and bold, and its familiarity with many 
kinds of present American life and manners, and its original, realistic treat- 
ment. . . Beneath the sprightly dash with which the story is outlined and 
filled, there is conscious strong power. It is finely written, and of decided 
merit. " 

THE EVENING POST, HARTFORD. “ Unlike most novels, the first chap- 
ters of this remarkable story are the weakest. But let the reader persevere and 
he will find opened to him a wonderful world of novel and interesting charac- 
ters, a valuab.e and unique philosophy, and an almost unsurpassed background 
of American city and country scenery, both land and water." 

BOSTON ADVERTISER. “The writer displays more than average insight 
into the workings of human nature, and the naturalness of his character draw- 
ing is no doubt the secret of the special attraction that lies in the book." 

CLEVELAND LEADER. “ This is a purely American novel. . . and one 
of the best we have seen. It is so vivid in its description of localities and 
personages, that the reader hardly doubts that all is real. And in accom- 
plishing this the author achieves a kind of charm that is as delightful as it is 
hard to define." 


RUTHERFORD. 


A New Novel. By Edgar Fawcett. Author of “An Ambitious Woman,” 
“A Gentleman of Leisure,” “ A Hopeless Case,” “ Tinkling Cymbals,” 
etc. 12010, paper, 25 cts; cloth, extra paper, $1.00. 

MR. FAWCETT has of late been steadily and rapidly advancing toward the 
foremost place among American novelists. He deals with pluses of society 
that require the utmost skill ; but his quick insight into character, his ready 
sympathies, and his conscientious literary art, have proved more than equal to 
the tasks he has undertaken. It is certain that many of the best critics are 
watching his course with high anticipations. In ‘ Rutherford, his latest 
work, neither they nor the public will be disappointed. It is a novel of New 
York society, and rarely has character been portrayed with more delicate but 
effective touches than in the case of some of these representatives of Knicker- 
bocker caste. The story is by no means confined to them however, but is en- 
riched to a very great degree by characters taken from_ lower social planes. 
Nothing the author has ever done, perhaps, surpasses his characterization of 
4 Pansy ’ one of the two sisters who have fallen from affluence to poverty. 
Through them he arouses the deepest sympathies, and shows a dramatic 
power that is full of promise. It is needless, of course, to commend the liter- 
ary finish of Mr. Fawcett’s style. It is last approaching perfection. 

FUNK & WAQNALLS, Publishers, 10 & 12 Dey St., New York. 



109 


ARCHIBALD M ALMA ISON. 

A New Novel. ByJuLiAN Hawthorne. Price, paper, 15 cts.; cloth, extra 

paper, 75 cents. 

INDEPENDENT, N. Y. “ Mr. Julian Hawthorne can choose no better com- 
pliment upon his new romance, * Archibald Malmaison,’ than the assurance 
that he has at last put forth a story which reads as if the manuscript, written 
in his father’s indecipherable handwriting and signed * Nathaniel Haw- 
thorne,’ had lain shut into desk for twenty-five years, to be only just new 
pulled out and printed. It is a masterful romance ; short, compressed, terri- 
bly dramatic in its important situations, based upon a psychologic idea as 
weird and susceptible of startling treatment as possible. It is a book to be 
read through in two hours, but to dwell in the memory forever. It so cleverly 
surpasses ‘ Garth ’ or * Bressant in its sympathy with the style of the elder 
Hawthorne that it must remain unique among Mr. J ulian Hawthorne’s works 
— until he exceeds it. The employment of the central theme and the literary 
conduct of the plot is nearly beyond criticism, 'ihe frightful ciimax breaks 
upon the perception of the reader with surprise that he did not foresee it ; 
another tribute on his part to the unconventionality which is one of the many 
touches of eminent art in Mr. Hawthorne's tale.” 

R. H. STODDARD, IN NEW YORK MAIL AND EXPRESS. “The cli- 
max is so terrible, as the London Times h-s pointed out, and so dramatic in 
its intensity, that it is impossible to class it with any situation of modern fic- 
tion. . . Mr. Hawthorne is cleaily and easily the first of living romancer 1 -.” 

THE CONTINENT, N. Y. “The most noteworthy story Mr. Julian Haw- 
thorne has ever proJuced. . . No wilder romance has ever been imagmed- 

. . A brilliant and intensely powerful work. . . It is certain that such 
power sets the author at the head of m»Uern romancers.” 

THE LONDON TIMES . “ After perusal of this weird, fantastic tale (Arclv- 
bald Malmaison), it must be admitted that upon the shoulders of Julian 
Hawthorne has descended in no small degree the mantle of his more illustri- 
ous father. The climax is so terrible, and so dramatic in its intensity, that it 
is impossible to class it with any situation of modern fiction. There is much 
psychological ingenuity shown in some of the more subtie touches that lend 
an air of reality to this wild romance.” 

THE LONDON GLOBE. “ ‘Archibald Malmaison,’ is one of the most daring 
attempts to set the wildest fancy masquerading in the cloak of science, which 
has ever, perhaps, been made. Mr. Hawthorne has managed to combine the 
almost perfect construction of a typical French novelist, with a more than 
typically German power of conception. Genius is here of a kind more artistic- 
ally self-governed than Hoffman’s, and less obviously self-conscious than 
Poe’s. A strange sort of jesting humor gives piquancy to its grimne.-s.” 

THE ACADEMY. “ Mr. Hawthorne has a more powerful imagination than 
any contemporary writer of fiction. He has the very uncommon gift of taking 
hold of the reader’s attention at once, and the still more uncommon gift of 
maintaining his grasp when it is fixed.” 


THE PEARL-SHELL NE CKL ACE. —PRINCE BA- 
RONES WIFE. 

Two Novels. By JOlian Hawthorne, one volume, i2mo, paper, 15 cents; 
cloth, extra paper, 75 cents. [In press.] 

CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. “The ‘Pearl-Shell Necklace’ is a story of 
permanent value, and stands quite alone for subtle blending of individual and 
general human interest, poetic and psychologic suggestion, and rare humor.” 

SPECTATOR. “ * The Pearl-Shell Necklace ’ wherever found, would stamp 
its author as a man of genius. Even the elder Hawthorne never produced 
more weird effects within anything like the same compass. And yet there is 
absolutely no imitation.” 

FUNK & WAGNALLS, Publishers, 10 & 12 Dey St., New York. 


FUBLICA TI ONS OF FUNK & WAGNALLS, NEW YORK. 


110 


“ most important and practical work of tke ace on t!ia 
Psalms.”— SCHAFF. 


©IX VOLUMES NOW READY, 

-SPURGEON'S GREAT LIFE WORK- 

THE TREASURY OF DAVID! 

To be published in seven octavo volumes of about 470 pages each, 
uniformly bound, and making a library of 3,300 pages, 
in handy form for reading and reference. 

It is published simultaneously with, and contains the exact matter of, 
the English Edition, which has sold at $4.00 per volume 
in this country— $28.00 for the work when com- 
pleted. Our edition is in every way pref- 
erable, and is furnished at 

ONE-HALF THE PBICE OF 
THE ENGLISH 
EDITION. 

Price, Per Vol. $2.00. 

“Messrs. Funk Wagnalls have entered into an arrangement with' 
me to reprint THE TREASUR Y OF DA VID in the United States. / 
have every confidence in them that they will issue it correctly and worthily. 
It has been the great literary work of my life , and I trust it will be a j 
kindly received in America as in England. I wish for Messrs. Funk sue * 
eess in a ventzire which must involve a great risk and much outlay. 

“Dec. 8 , 1881. C. H. SPURGEON." 

Volumes I., II., III., IV., V. and VI. are now ready; volume 
VIL, which completes the great work, is now under the hand of the 
author. Subscribers can consult their convenience by ordering all 
the volumes issued, or one volume at a time, at stated intervals, until 
the set is completed by the delivery of Volume VII. 

From the Urge number of hearty commendations of this import- 
ant work, we give the following to indicate the value set upon the 
same by 

EMINENT THEOLOGIANS AND SCHOLARS. 

PJiilip ScliafF, ,D.,the Eminent i tical work of the age on the Psalter is 
Commentator and the President of the ‘The Treasury of David/ by Charles H 
American Bible Revision Committee, Spurgeon. It is full of the force and 
gays: “The most important and prac- I genius of this celebrated preacher, and 

(over.) 


ttf-Tke above works will be sent by mail, postage paid, on receipt of the price. 


Ill 


PUBLICATIONS OP FUN A <C WAV NALLS, NEW YORK. 


ricii in selections from the entire range 
^'literature.’' 

William M. Taylor, D,D.» 

New York says: ‘ In the exposition of 
the heart ‘The Treasury of David' is 
sui generis, rich in experience and pre- 
eminently devotional. The exposition , 
is always fresh. To the preacher it is > 
especially suggestive." 

John Hall, D.D., New Yovk, 
gays: '* There are two questions that 
must interest every expositor of the 
Divine Word. What does a particular 
passage mean, and to what use is it to 
be applied in public teaching? In the 
department of the latter Mr. Spur- 
geon’s great work on the Psalms is 
without an equal. Eminently practical 
in his own teaching, he has collected in 
those volumes the best thoughts of the 
best minds on the Psalter, and espe- 
cially of that great body. loosely grouped 
together as the Puritan divines. I am 
heartily glad that by arrangements, 
satisfactory to all concerned, tl e Messrs. 
Punk & Wagnalls are to bring tnis great 
work within the reach of ministers 
everywhere, as the English edition is 
necessarily expensive. I wish the 
highest success to the enterprise.” 

William Ormlston, H.i>.,New 

York, says: “ I consider * The Treasury 
of David’ a work of surpassing excel- 
lence.of inestimable value to every stu- 
dent of the isalter. It will prove a 
standard work on the Psalms for all 
time. The instructive introductions, 
the racy original expositions, the 
numerous quaint illustrations gath- 
ered from wide and varied fields, and 
the suggestive sermonic hints, render 
the volumes invaluable to allpreachers, 
and indispensable to every minister’s 
library. All who delight in reading the 
Psaloos — and what Christian does not? 
— will prize this w«rk. It is a rich 
cyclopaedia of the literature of tnese 
ancient odes.” 

Theo. Li. Cnyler, D.D.. Brook- 
lyn, says: “ I have used Mr. Spurgeon’s 
‘The Treasury of David’ for three 
years, and found it worthy of its name. 
Whoso goeth in there will find ‘rich 
spoils.’ At both my visits to Mr. S. he 
spoke with much enthusiasm of this 
undertaking as one of his favorite 
methods of enriching himself and 
others.” 

•Teste B. Thomas, D.D , Brook- 
lyn, says: “ I havo the highest concep- 


tion ot the sterling worth of all Mr. 
Spurgeon’s publications, and I incline 
to regard his Treasury of David’ as 
having received more of his loving 
labor than any other. I regard its 
publication at a lower price as a great 
service to American Bible Students.” 

New Yorlt Observer says: “A 
rich compendium of suggestive com- 
ment upon the richest devotional 
puetry ever given to mankind. ’ 

l'h« Congregatlonalist, Bos- 
ton, says: " As a devout and spiritually 
suggestive work, it is meeting with 
the warmest approval and receiving 
the hearty commendation of the most 
distinguished divines.” 

United: Presbyterian, Pitts- 
burg, Pa., says: “It is unapproached 
as a commentary on the Psalms. It is 
of equal value to ministers and lay- 
men — a quality that works of the kind 
rarely possess.” 

North American, Philadelphia, 
Pa.: says: “Will find a place in tho 
library of every minister who knows 
how to appreciate a good thing.” 

New York Independfnt says: 
** He has ransacked evangelical litera- 
ture,and comes forth, like Jessica from 
her father’s house, ‘gilded with 
ducats’ and rich plunder in ths shape 
of good and helplul quotations.’ 

New York Tribune says; "For 
the great majority of readers who seek 
in the Psalms those practical lessons 
in which they are so rich, and those 
wonderful interpretations of heart-life 
and expression of emotion in which 
they anticipate the New Testament, wo 
know of no book like this, nor as good. 
It is literally a * Treasury.’ ” 

S. S. Times says: “Mr. Spurgeon’s 
style is simple, direct and perspicuous, 
olten reminding one of the matchless 
prose of Bunyan.” 

West* rnChrigtinn Advocate, 
Cincinnati, O., says: “The price is ex- 
tremely moderate for so largo and im- 
portant a work. * • * We have ex- 
amined this volume with care, and we 
are greatly pleased with the plan of 
execution.” 

Christian Herald says: "Con- 
tains more felicitous illustrations, 
more valuable sermonic hints, than can 
be found in all other works on tb® 
same book put together.” 


T®' above works will be sent by mail, postage paid, on receipt of the price . 


PUBLICATIONS OF FUNK &* W AGNAILS, NEW YORK. 


112 


GEMS OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


From the Writings of Dr. Guthrie, arranged under 
the subjects which they illustrate, 
v By an American Clergyman, 

Price, in Cloth, $1.50. 


This book abounds in picturesque similes. Dr. Guthrie ha3 rarely. 
If ever, been equaled either in the number, beauty or force of the 
illustrations with which his sermons and writings abound. They 
have been collected by an American clergyman, a great admirer of 
the author, and the book forms a perfect storehouse of anecdotes, 
comparisons, examples and illustrations. It contains the choicest of 
his illustrations, arranged under the subjects which they illustrate. 

Ihe L >ndon Times says: “ Dr. Guthrie is the most elegant orator in 
Europe.” 

Dr. Candli>-h says: “Dr. Guthrie’s genius has long since placed 
him at the head of all the gifted and popular preachers of our daj .” 

Dr. James W. Alexander says : “I listened to him for fifty minutes, 
but they passed like nothing.” 


The Western Christian Ad- 
vocate says : “Dr. Guthrie was pe- 
culiarly happy in the use of brilliant 
and forcible illustrations in his ser- 
mons and writings. An American h*s 
selected many of these gems of thought 
and arranged them under the subjects 
which they illustrate. Readers and 
preachers will enjoy them, and will find 
many beautiful sentiments and seed- 
thoughts for present and future use.” 

The Ho'b’n Snrday Globe 

says : “Dr. Guthrie’s illustrations are 
rich "and well chosen and give groat 
force to his ideas. Love, faith, hope, 
charity are the pillars of his belief.” 

The Lutheran Observer, Phila- 
delphia, says: “The power of illustra- 
tion should be cultivated by preachers 
of tho Gospel, and this volume of speci- 
mens, if used aright, will furnish valu- 
able suggestions. A good illustration 
in a sermon awakens the imagination, 
helps the memory and gives the barb 
to truth that it may fasten in the 
heart.” 


jyy* The above works will be sent by mail, 


Tho Christian Intelligencer 

says : " It is a large repository full of 
stirring thoughts set in those splendid 
forms of ‘ spiritualized imagination,' of 
which Dr. Guthrie waa the peerless 
master. ” 

The Christian Observer, Louis- 
ville, says: “No words of ours could 
add to its value.” 

The Boston Post says: “A rare 
mine of literary wealth.” 

ThoObwrv*r, New York, says: "It 
was not given to every generation to 
have a Guthrie.’’ 

Thi C^r'sdui Advocate, New 
York, says: “This book will be real 
with interest by tho religious world.” 

The Zion’s Herald, Boston, says; 
“Preachers will appreciate this vol- 
ume.” 

Tho Christian Guardian. To- 
ronto, says: “An exceedingly interesting 
and valuable work.” 


paid, on receipt of ihe price. 


postage 


113 


GEORGE W. CURTIS: 

11 A most serviceable companion 

HON. JUDGE EDMUNDS, U. S. SENATOR: 

u The most complete and best work of the kind A 

GEN. STEWART L. WOODFORD: 

11 The miost complete and accurate book of the kind” 

MAJ.-GEN. GEO. B. MeCLELLAN: 

“ A work that should be in every library A 

GEORGE WASHINGTON CHILDS: 

“ Any one who dips into it will at once make a place for 

it among his well-chosen boohs." 

HENRY WARD BEECHER: 

“ Good all the way through 

HON. ABRAM S. HEWITT: 

u The completeness of its indices is si m ply astonishing 

WENDELL PHILLIPS (Just before his Death): 

“It is of rare value to the scholar A 

BOSTON POST: 

“ The only standard booJc of quotations. For convenience and usefulness the work 
cannot, to our mind, be surpassed, and it must long remain the standard among its hind, 
ranlcing side by side with, and being equally indispensable in every well-ordered library, 
as Worcester’s or Webster’s Dictionary, Roget’s Thesaurus, and Crabb’s Synonyms 

h THE SBOYE COMMENDATIONS REFER TO* 

tfhe jloyt-Ward Encyclopaedia of Quotations, 

PROSE AND POETRY. 

30,000 QUOTATIONS, 50,000 LINES OF CONCORDANCE. 

This full concordance of over 60,000 lines, is to quotations what Young’s and 
Cruden’s Concordances are to tho Bible. A quotation, if but a word is remembered, 

can easily be found by means of this great work. 

* 

Prices: — Royal, 8 vo., over 500 pp.. Heavy Paper, Cloth Binding, $ 5.00 ; 
Sheep, $ 6.50 ; Half Morocco, $ 8.00 ; Full Morocco, $ 10 . 00 . 

Publishers : FUNK & WAONALLS, 10 & 12 Dey Street, New York. 


THE STANDARD SERIES. 

Best: Books for a Trifle. 

These books are printed in readable type, on fair paper, and are bound in postal 
card manlil-a. • 

These books are printed wholly without abridgment, except Canon Farrar’s “ Life 
of Christ ” and his “ Life of Paul.” , 


No. Price. 

1. John Plougnman’s Talk. C. H. 

Spurgeon. On Choice of Books. 
Thomas Carlyle.' 4to. Both $0 12 

2. Manliness of Christ. Thomas 

Hughes. 4to 10 

3. Essays. Lord Macaulay. 4to.._ 15 

4. Light of Asia. Edwin Arnold. 4to. 15 

5. Imitation of Christ. Thomas a 

Kempis. 4to 15 

6-7. Life of Christ. Canon Farrar. 

4 to 50 

8. Essays. Thomas Carlyle. 4to.. 20 

9-10. Life and Work of St.. Paul. 

Canon Farrar. 4to 2 parts, both 50 

11. Self-Culture. Prof. J. S. Blackie. 

4to. 2 parts, both 10 

12-19. Popular History of England. 

Chas. Knight. 4to 2 80 

20-21. Buskin’s Letters to Workmen 

and Laborers. 4to. 2 parts, both 30 

22. Idyls of the King. Alfred Tenny- 
son. 4to 20 

13. Life of Rowland Hill. Rev. V. J. 

Charlesworth. 4to 15 

24. Town Geology. Charles Kings- 
ley. 4to 15 

25. Alfred the Great. Thos. Hughes. 

4to 20 

26. Outdoor Life in Europe. Rev. E. 

P. Thwing. 4to 29 

27. Calamities of Authors. I.. D’ls- 

raeli. 4to 20 

28. Salon of Madame Necker. Parti. 

4to 15 

29. Ethics of the Dust. JohnRuskin. 

4to 15 

0—31. Memories of My Exile. Louis 

Kossuth. 4to 40 

;2. Mister Horn and His Friends. 

Illustrated. 4to 15 

-3-34. Orations of Demosthenes. 4to. 40 

5. Frondes Agrestes. John Rus- 

kin. 4to 15 

6. Joan of Arc. Alphonse de La- 
martine. 4to 10 

7. Thoughts of M. Aurelius Anto- 
ninus. 4to : 15 

8. Salon of Madame Necker. Part 

• II. 4to 15 

9. The Hermits. Chas. Kingsley. 4to. 15 

0. John Ploughman’s Pictures. C. 

H. Spurgeon. 4to 15 

1. Pulpit Table-Talk. Dean Ram- 
say. 4to .. 10 

2. Bible and Newspaper. C. H. 

Spurgeon. 4to 15 

3. Lacon. Rev. C. C. Colton. 4to. 20 


No. Ffice. 

44. Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World. 


45. America Revisited. George Au- 

E ustus Sala. 4to 20 

ife of C. H. Spurgeon. 8vo 20 

47. John Calvin. M. Guizot. 4to... 15 

48-49. Dickens’ Christmas Books. 

Illustrated. 8vo gfi 

50. Shairp’s Culture and Religion. 8vo. 15 
51-52. Godet’s Commentary on Luke. 

Ed. by Dr. John Hall. 8vo, 2 parts, 

both 2 00 

53. Diary of a Minister’s Wife. Part 

I. 8vo 15 

54-57. Van Doren’s Suggestive Com- 
mentary on Luke. New edition, 

enlarged. 8vo 3 00 

58. Diary of a Minister's Wife. Part 

II. 8vo 15 

59. The Nutritive Cure. Dr. Robert 

Walter. 8vo 15 

60. Sartor Resartus. Thomas Car- 
lyle. 4to 25 

61-62. Lothair. Lord Beaconsfield. 

8vo ... 50 

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Thwing. 8vo 10 

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III. 4to 15 

65-66. The Popular History of Eng- 
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Hughes. 8vo, in two parts 60 

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72. The Conversion of Children. Rev. 

Edward Payson Hammond. 12mo 30 

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F. Crafts. 8vo 20 

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Reid. With Introduction by E. 

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Charles F. Deems. D.D. 12mo.. 20 

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79. Reminiscences of Rev. Lyman 

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